Thoughts - 20 Years of Sporadic Wargaming with Games Workshop.

So, I had one of those epiphany moments the other day as I realised it was October 2017. Normally October is highlighted by Halloween and my girlfriends birthday, this year however marks another anniversary, one particular to me.

This year marks 20 years since I walked into Games Workshop and bought my first boxed set of miniatures.

This was back in the days of 2nd Edition 40k, 5th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy and a host of Specialist Games*.

My first miniatures were a box of Lizardmen Saurus and Skink warriors, waaaaay back for 5th edition Fantasy.

(This is not my miniatures, just a picture of one i pulled off Google for this post).

These were duly taken home and painted (badly, but everyone has to start somewhere), but the seed had been planted.

I remember getting the 5th edition fantasy starter box and a Lizardman Stegadon that year for Christmas, and by new year the dining table was ringing to Bretonnian Knights and Lizardmen warriors locked in mortal combat with each other (that's how i imagined it anyway, in reality it was probably flipping of pages of a book and dice rattling).

All was well and I was happy enough fighting battles in the Old World, but one rainy Saturday afternoon in the local Games Workshop, the manager brought out this:

And into the murky world of Warhammer 40k I delved, giving up on fantasy nearly completely.

Bringing out Gorkamorka, that manager engaged the Sci-Fi gamer in me and turned me onto 40k, not only 40k, but Orks in particular In the 7 different editions of 40k I have played, the Greenskins have been a constant presence in my hobbying. I have built an Ork army for every edition apart from 6th and 7th (getting shot off the table in turn 1 of four different 6th edition games kind of soured the game a little.

On this note, numerous copies of Assault on Black Reach were bought when 5th edition came out, and I assembled a huge horde to do battle...but thanks to the badly organised rules and codex creep back then, very little happened with them (in fact I STILL have most of them in a box with the word eBay scrawled on the side of it, must get round to sorting that).

4th edition came and went with Imperial Guard at the helm as I was reading the Gaunts Ghosts novels as they were released one by one. Apocalypse also came out during this period and my gaming friends at the time got ourselves onto a war footing, one amusing memory from the first house I was renting at the time, was of my then girlfriend walking in on a room of four guys, nearly 200 freshly built miniatures on the table and the entire room stinking of plastic glue (we had forgotten to open a window).

5th edition and it was back to the Orks, but my gamer group drifted apart as we all got full time jobs, most of the time when we would get together on Saturdays to play in a friend's basement was when we were all in college together.
Life started to get in the way of the hobby and I drifted away for a while. The itch was always there, but things like Dawn of War on the PC, were much easier to get along with at that time as they didn't require scads of cash being spent.

6th and 7th editions of 40k were very poor and I didn't really do much during that period with GW games, I bought and built the odd model, but nothing like the whole swathes of armies I had had in the past. When my Space Wolves, who were phenomenal in 5th edition, were consistently beaten in every game I played, simply because I couldn't afford to buy all the latest toys, the writing was very nearly on the wall.

During this period I didn't touch Warhammer Fantasy, as that had expanded the army size and was ridiculous to buy into...we're talking nearly £400 before you could start playing  a standard points value game, not something I could do at the time.

Happily salvation was on the way...

 Coming full circle for 20 years of Games Workshop in my life, and we have 8th edition 40k,

When the pre-order for 8th edition was announced, I liked the rumours I had been reading online by Games Workshop themselves**, so I decided to drop some cash on the main rulebook, and the indexes for Marines and Orks.

For now I am building a White Scar army, but I have an Ork horde half built as well.

Some of my finished Orks in the display case against another friend's Ad-Mech forces.

 Fantasy never disappeared either, as for Age of Sigmar, I have part of a Beastman force (I just got some chariots from my friend Chris for it) and a Freeguild (humans) force I am working on.

 My converted "Varangian Guard" count-as Greatsword unit for Age of Sigmar, need to sort the motif for the banner (always something to do...).

 Hopefully with the new CEO making decent strides and all the changes at GW in the past couple of years**, I will be able to sit down in another 20 years and talk about the path taken again...


Until next time.

 - Lewis





*now a lot of people will moan about GW's practise's of cutting out specialist games, and their pricing model, but this isn't the time or place for that.

**starter box deals, Warhammer TV (it still boggles the mind that I can sit and watch GW games live on TwitchTV), convention appearances, actually responding to questions and comments on social media!