Rabbitman and the Workshop

Games Workshop Merry leading Thistle & Rose halflings

Warhammer 40k, Games Workshop. 

It's hard to avoid. 

Much of my Social Media feed is 40k stuff. And I'm picky about who I follow back.

Perhaps because I'm one of the remaining "Aifix Generation"* I've made a comfortable place in the hobby with historical figures, Donald Featherstone, and tiny print run, barely viable, rule publications, as the cancerous tumor that is Games Workshop slowly grew and took over and pushed what had once been the mainstream (historicals) very definitely into the fringes of the hobby. 

The fact that we now have an adult generation of wargamers born since 2000, for whom 40k is all there is to miniature wargaming, always rings a bitterly discordant bell for me. I remember when the plastic Space Marines and Rogue Trader were the exciting new things that the kids were getting into. Of course, by this time I was in university and starting life with the soon to be Mrs Rabbitman, so I wasn't paying much attention. There were other things to occupy my time, and there wasn't any money for miniatures anyway.

This week I did a bit of a survey of my gaming life and realized  that I think I've played ONE game of 40k (using my Northwest Frontier 1890s Indian troops as Imperial Guards) and two(?) games of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

I've got, I think, a grand total of 6 GW figures, most of whom are for Middle Earth.

• WFB tree man,
• WFB jester
• Nazgûl on horse 
• A Rider of Rohan 
• Merry, in armour fighting 
• Eowyn, on foot, unpainted

Bretonnian Jester

Warhammer Fantasy Treeman

Part of the problem was the expense. Even 40 years ago 40k miniatures were more expensive. And the rules didn't do much for me, being susceptible to min-maxing. But the biggest part was me. I was a serious young man with big, serious ideas. I was looking for hard SF and ideas about the future of warfare and just simply did not get the satire or appreciate the silly.

Which lead me to stupidly trade away my fairly substantial Epic 40k collection. Epic 40k was a really brilliant game, that I actually played a lot. But I was young and serious, and you couldn't separate Epic from the 40k universe. Older, wiser me would embrace Titans and the goofy Gargants happily,  and not worry about ground pressure. (This points to why Battletech has never grabbed me. It takes itself rather seriously and I just think that mechs are a flawed concept that should fall over more.)

Also I was young, idealistic, and looking for good guys. So naturally I kept looking at the defenders of humanity and being disappointed by the dark, Kafka-esque portrayal of a fascist human future. Now I'd probably play Orks. Or anyone other than the Imperium. 

Graphic by Andy Clark https://bsky.app/profile/andycruns.bsky.social

I still have my Epic 40k rules, dice etc. and I've compiled a list of proxies. Maybe someday I'll return to it with a greater appreciation of the silly. 

*Airfix Generation (n.): older wargamers, mostly in their 50s or 60s now, who got started with the inexpensive and widely available Airfix HO scale plastic figures. Naturally, we started as historical wargamers, and only moved into Science Fiction and Fantasy games later, once we learned how to convert an ACW Union soldier into an orc or a WW2 German into a Star Wars Stormtrooper. Those "Robinhood" archers really got around.