I Spent How Much on Little Plastic Men!?: My Love/Hate Relationship with Miniature Wargaming

I've written before about my love of various nerdful things, including video games, comics and pen and paper role-playing games. One particular area of nerddom that I haven't yet discussed in this blog is miniature wargaming. The reason for this is because I have a particularly complicated relationship with this particular hobby and have never been able to put my feeling into words. However, I'm going to try to sort through some shit in this post, so buckle up. 

For those of you who don't know, miniature wargaming simulates battles set in various historical eras or fictional worlds in which military units are represented by miniature physical models on a model battlefield (usually a tabletop). While game systems vary, most use a ruler to adjudicate movement and dice to determine outcomes. These games generally take a while to play, with most battles lasting at least a couple of hours. It's a hobby that has existed for a very long time and one particular wargame, Chainmail, served as the genesis for a little game called Dungeons & Dragons. The hobby has existed for as long as it has because it appeals to fans of strategy games, model builders, and painters. 

As for my history with the game, like most things in my nerd career, dates back to my childhood in the 80s. I was in a Leisure World store with my brother one rainy summer afternoon looking over the games section, and we discovered a game called Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader. It had these badass-looking fellows clad in blue armor firing big-ass guns at a mostly unseen enemy. We were both fascinated by this and proceeded to flip through the book. It was full of dark imagery and a bunch of numbers and statistics that I didn't rightly understand. I knew it was a game of some kind, but that was about it. I begged my mom to buy it for me, but since I wasn't sure what it was, I couldn't properly express to her what it was either and, thus, my requests were ignored.

Fast forward years later. I'm in my late teens and my buddies Paul and Shaun introduced me to a board game called Siege of the Citadel. I don't remember much about the specifics of that board game; however, it was like a less complicated version of a min wargame and even used customer miniatures as play pieces. Anyways, after mentioning how much fun I had to Paul, he informed me that Siege was based on a deeper, more complicated came called  Warzone. After he explained what it was, my mind flashed back to that rainy day in 1987, and things started to come together. Warzone wasn't Warhammer 40k by any means (more on that later), but I was definitely interested. I had played that game for a bit, and my friend group eventually switched over to a fantasy game made by the same company called Chronopia. This is where I hit my first hurdle with the hobby. I discovered that I enjoyed building and painting the models, as well as playing the game. However, the models themselves were not cheap, particularly for a young adult with little to no disposable income. Thanks to the prohibitive cost and a lack of free time, our interest in the game waned, and the models were placed on a shelf somewhere, never to be used again.

Spring forward a few more years, and I've moved halfway across the country and haven't thought about wargaming in ages. That is, until one day, a buddy of mine asks if I'd ever played Warhammer. I answered that I'd hadn't but that I knew what it was. We got to talking, and since the game had recently released its 8th Edition, it would be a good time to give it a go. Soon, we managed to convince a few other friends to join us and then it was go time.

We jumped whole hog into the game, and, unlike my last wargaming experience, I had a stable job and could afford the models (as well as the paints and other accessories). Unfortunately for me, I may have gone a touch overboard on that side of things, spending God knows how much on numerous models for several different types of armies. However, that was nothing compared to what was to come.

After only a couple of years, we ended up giving up on Warhammer Fantasy and decided to transition to its grimdark sci-fi counterpart, the aforementioned Warhammer 40k. I'd like to say that I had learned from my mistakes collecting for Warhammer Fantasy. I'd LIKE to say that I took a more moderate approach to this game. But I can't because things just got worse. 

Our dalliance with Warhammer 40k led to what I've referred to as The Warhammer Arms Race, which was basically an unspoken competition between me and my friend Evelyn to see who could build the greatest army. As the two people in the group with the most disposable income, we took it upon ourselves to outdo one another whenever we could. She would buy a Space Marine Land Raider, so I'd buy an Imperial Guard Valkyrie Gunship. She'd start a Necrons army, so I start a Tyranid army. Back and forth it went. So many models were purchased, and so much money went away. 

At this point, it probably seems like I'm lamenting this period in my life when it's the opposite. I had a blast playing both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k. Sure, there was the occasional tense moment (such as the "incident" with Evelyn's brother Mike or the time I got upset and kicked a tape measure into the wall), but still, I think all of us had fun with both games. Unfortunately, as with many of the things we love, life got in the way. Our group slowly began to disperse and move to other cities (including myself). As a result, the models got put in a box and stuffed in a closet somewhere until they were eventually sold due to lack of use.

It's now been around 6 years since I last painted a model or played a Warhammer game. For the first little while, I didn't really miss it. As a single nerd with no attachments, I had plenty of other hobbies to occupy my time, so I didn't notice it. Then, a year or so back, my friend Sam convinced me to purchase the video game Total Warwarrhammer II on Steam. The game was made by Creative Assembly, the makers of the Total War series of strategy games, and I've been playing that pretty regularly over the past year-plus. Like the original tabletop game, I've had a blast playing it, but it's created some stirrings deep within my psyche. I've found that I really miss playing the tabletop game. Not so much the modeling or painting side because I simply don't have the time for all that, but I missed playing Warhammer Fantasy. 

Unfortunately for me, Games Workshop, the makers of the game, stopped production on Warhammer Fantasy years ago, so rebuilding a collection is a difficult and even more expensive prospect. However, thanks to the magic of Tabletop Simulator and Google Translate, I've managed to rekindle this long-lost hobby at a fraction of the cost. So, basically, what I'm getting here is no matter what the hobby is or how long it has been since I played it, the immutable, inescapable fact is...I really need a girlfriend...