Time for Positive Action

I'm returning to the same theme in quick succession, but yesterday, Cavan Scott, one of the writers of the new Warhammer Adventures books for children tweeted this:
https://twtter.com/cavanscott/status/1005198649276747777

In the last couple of weeks, I have had people try to post comments on my website saying they hope I get terminally ill. I am, apparently, a cist on humanity’s corpse. Why? Because I’m hired to write children’s book for properties the commenters love.

— Cavan Scott (@cavanscott) June 8, 2018

This, understandably, lead to a horrified response from a number of wargamers. Gav Thorpe's tweet basically sums it up.

Enough with this. Know someone that does this toxic shit? Call them on it. Don’t play them. Don’t accept it. This is not our community. https://t.co/OPFCiUIO0T

— Gav Thorpe (@GavThorpeCreate) June 9, 2018

While I largely agree with this, I can't agree that "this is not our community." As much as I'm sure most wargamers wish this were not the case, it has been our community for a long time.

The truth is that the wargaming industry in general, and Games Workshop in particular, has been terrible at representation. While the industry may not have actively welcomed racists and misogynists, by making almost every character white and male, they have done little or nothing to make the unwelcome. They have, in effect, created a safe space for the far-right.

The hostile response to the Warhammer Adventure series needs to lead a to a prompt response from Games Workshop that racism, misogyny and violent threats are unwelcome. Games Workshop certainly used to have a policy that anyone caught shoplifting from Games Workshop or third party retailers would be banned from all their shops and shows. They should extend this to people making hate speech. The company needs to adopt a zero tolerance approach to this.

Secondly, Games Workshop needs to take rapid steps to improve representation in its core games. They have stated that they intend to improve, but that their three year product cycle makes change slow. They need to pick up the pace. It make take time to bring new models to market, but there are things they can do more quickly.

Firstly, they should star work on a new studio army, preferably a Space Marine chapter or a collection of Stormcast Eternals, made up largely, if not exclusively, of not white characters. This is something that can be fixed at the painting stage. This new army should be featured in promotional material and in White Dwarf battle reports.

Secondly, they should take steps to introduce more female characters into their games. For a long time, official Warhammer 40,000 canon has been that all Space Marines are male. This should change. If there has to be an in universe explanation for it, then they can simply state that the new Primaris Marines can be male or female. Space Marine armour is not particularly gendered, so Games Workshop could introduce female Primaris Marines by simply producing a plastic sprue of female heads which can be used with the existing models. They already produce upgrade sprues for the major Space Marine chapters, so a sprue of female heads should not be a major challenge. They should start work on this immediately, and keep fans up to date on their progress.

There is a n opportunity for Games Workshop to push back against racism and misogyny in the wargaming community, they shouldn't miss it.

A few thoughts on Warhammer Adventures

I think it's fair to say that the announcement that Games Workshop would be publishing a range of novels aimed at children has had a mixed response. So far, there have been basically two categories of negative response. The first is that the Warhammer 40,000 universe, in particular, is not at all suitable for children and that doing this will inevitably lead to a "dilution" of the original concept.

The other has been straightforward bigotry.

Some people have less of a problem with the idea of children's books and more with them featuring characters who may not be white and male (or even more shockingly, neither).*

A large part of the problem here is that Games Workshop is based in a country that still treats "White and Male" as the default and everything else as a deviation from that. So introducing a non-white and non-male character looks, to some, like a political statement. This completely misses that presenting all characters as white and male is, itself, a political choice.

It's fair to say that Games Workshop has not had a great record on representation over the years and has been more than willing to follow this "white and male is the default" line. Female characters have existed, but they have tended to be restricted to specific units or armies, often with suspiciously little clothing.

As far as non-white characters go, Games Workshop has, if anything, been even worse. The Warhammer World was set up as an analogue to our own world in which the most of it outside of Europe was either unexplored, uninhabited or full of monsters. Gav Thorpe, rightly, pointed out that there are a quadrillion humans in the Imperium, but its funny how most of those painted by the design studio have ended up as white.

There are more than a quadrillion humans in the Imperium (and who knows how many in the Mortal Realms) but yeah, they’re all cishet white guys 🤔 🤬

[/Sarcasm] https://t.co/wVx9yg3fbF

— Gav Thorpe (@GavThorpeCreate) May 23, 2018

This is something that Games Workshop have been trying to address, albeit slowly. A handful of non-white characters have crept into Age of Sigmar and more female characters have started to appear as well. If Warhammer Adventures is setting a new standard then this is definitely a good thing, though they may still have a long way to go.

Recently, I have been trying to paint a few human models as non-white, as much because there was no reason not to. My Sisters of Battle and Blood Angel Shadow War Kill Teams both feature non-white models and I painted my Lord Ordinator as black.

The odd thing about painting non-white humans was realising that the paint colours made to represent human skin tones are pretty much all white skin. I have gone through a lot of "flesh" colours over the years: pale flesh, tanned flesh, rosy flesh, rotting flesh and even dark flesh, and they are all different shades of white flesh. The only exception is "Orc flesh" which is green. My darkest "flesh" colour is Game Colour "Heavy Skintone" which might be just about dark enough to represent someone from the middle east. To paint my Lord Ordinator and my Scout Sergeant I had to use Vallejo "German Camo Black/Brown."

Imagine if you were a 10 year old looking to get into miniature gaming having just read a Warhammer Adventure story. You just got one of the the starter sets and are looking for some paints for your Space Marines. Imagine you are looking through the racks of paints for some suitable colours. And now imagine you are not white. Wouldn't the range of colours labelled "flesh" send a pretty clear signal that this is hobby is not for people like you? That the company that produced them didn't even remember that you exist?

Miniature gaming desperately needs to move beyond the assumption that everyone is white and male. Warhammer Adventures are a tiny step in the right direction.

*I think my favourite stupid reaction is the claim that the character Kiri wearing a hood means she is supposed to be  a Muslim. A Muslim in a fantasy world with no concept of Christianity, Judaism or Islam and which the actual Gods interact with humans and be bought in the shops and added to your actual armies.

Two Steps Forward...

I picked up the new Miniature Wargames magazine on Friday. I'm a sporadic reader of most wargame magazines, but I usually pick up Miniature Wargames at this time of year because it includes the Salute show guide. This is a probably unnecessary as they hand them out on the day, but I like the chance to look at it in advance and work out which stalls and games to look out for.

The guide includes details of the free show miniature, which, in keeping with the show theme of the Russian Revolution, is a Bolshevik Woman soldier. This is the second year in a row that the miniature is of a woman but, in contrast to last year's Steampunk Victorian lady, this year's miniature is more historically plausible. The guide includes a three page article on painting the miniature with three suggested colour schemes.

This is the headline for the article.

Oh dear.

The soldier's age is not easy to determine, fairly common for a 28mm model, but I suppose she could plausibly be in her late teens or early twenties. On the other hand, she could be older, in her thirties, forties or even fifties, depending on how she was painted. So why "girl." I don't think the 2015 miniature was referred to as "Archer boy" nor was the semi-mythical Greek soldier from 2014 called "Argonaut boy."

You could argue that I am being unnecessarily fussy about a fairly trivial thing, but, in a way, that's the point. This miniature does so many things right; it's historical plausible, sensibly dressed, no hint of a chain mail bikini or a skin-tight cat suit here, in a strong and commanding pose with no hint of being submissive or needing to be rescued. Given how male dominated the hobby is and how often miniatures of women are sculpted entirely to appeal to men, this exactly the kind of inclusive miniature that's needed. So why balls it up with a stupid headline in the accompanying magazine? And remember that this is the official show guide, it will be handed out in the same goody bag as the miniature, this is, in effect, the model's official name.

They managed to come so close and yet are still so far.

Like last time, but more so

While it's pretty much agreed that 2016 was an absolutely terrible year internationally, politically and environmentally*, from a personal point of view, it has actually been pretty good. I recognise that this isn't so much small comfort as complete and total absent of comfort, and possibly offensive, but I'm reaching here.

At work my job has changed so I am now making more money for more interesting work and I got back to Japan for the first time since 2016, which is kind of a lifelong dream realised for the second time. From a wargames perspective things have gone pretty well too.

At the start of the year I said I want to game more, paint more of my existing models and buy less. Overall, I haven't done badly. I finished my Warhammer Siege Campaign, finishing a bunch of long neglected models in the process. The year's second project, Beyond the Gates of Antares, saw me focus on models I had picked up at the tail end of 2015.

Beyond the Gates of Antares was supposed to be a small project, finishing just enough models to play a game and then move on. But, once I finished my first Ghar battle suit, I got so into it, that I got slightly carried away. While it's good to get excited about a project, I did break my "no new models" rule pretty comprehensively.

So, in summary, I made progress towards my goals without quite meeting them. With that in mind, my goal for next year is to focus on my existing models and buy as little as possible. Pretty much the same as last year, but this time with more success.

The other thing I want to do is update my blog more, with more up to date posts on my progress. Even if no-one reads them except me, reviewing old blog posts and finding month long gaps can be pretty motivational.

Finally, here's a last update of the year, a C3M4 combat drone for Beyond the Gates of Antares. I picked it up a while back because it was pretty heavily discounted. I pretty much stuck with my standard Concord colour scheme.

The C3M4 is a key component of Warlord's new introductory scenario "Drone Integration." The scenario is so introductory that it doesn't even require the full BTGOA rules, all the rules you need are printed on the sheet.

So my BTGOA plan is: 1) Play Drone Integration, 2) Play a 500 point game with the full rules, 3) Finish painting all my Concord and Ghar stuff and play a 1000 point game, 4) Move onto a new project, using only models I already own.

On to 2017, I'm hoping it gets better for the planet without getting worse for me.

*Seriously, David Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Victoria Wood, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher etc etc and yet Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Rupert Murdoch are still breathing!

A brief observation of casual Sexism and wargaming

I had been planning to write a blog post tonight, just not the one I am actually writing. I got slightly derailed by this.

It's an extract from a new book, "Tabletop Wargames – A Designers’ and Writers’ Handbook" by Rick Priestly and John Lambshead. It came to my attention thanks to the Dice Bag Lady on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheDiceBagLady) and Delaney King at http://kingsminis.blogspot.co.uk. It was then followed up by this extract.

Unsurprisingly, there was a certain amount of outrage expressed at the casual transphobia inherent in describing a transition from Male to Female as "enough to unsettle anyone" and the inclusion of "it" as a pronoun in the second section. Delaney King has already written a blog post on the subject here.

I have to admit that my immediate reaction was not as straightforwardly angry. I read both statements as crass attempts at humour rather than deliberately intending to offend. But I'm white and male and don't have to put up with this sort of thing on a daily basis. I'm certainly not going to criticise anyone for being angry about this. But there are a number of problematic statements and attitudes on display here.

Firstly, I want to take issue with the opening statement. Whilst it is true that wargaming is a male dominated hobby, I am not sure what about the use of gender neutral or female pronouns in rules renders that "painfully obvious." Where exactly is the pain here? I can't imagine any male gamer reading a rule book, coming across that the words "she" or "her" and thinking much more than "they're trying a bit hard." I suppose it's possible that someone might read such a book and hurl it across the room in disgust at the mere suggestion that women might invade their sacred space, but I think this probably represents a vanishingly small demographic. So where exactly is the pain? I can't see how any male wargamer could be seriously effected by the use of female pronouns.

This might invite the counter argument that if men can tolerate female pronouns, women can tolerate male pronouns. The problem with this is that it ignores the reality of the wargaming hobby. It is, as a matter of fact, male dominated, any visit to a wargaming show will bear that out, which can already be off putting to women gamers. While the use of exclusively male pronouns reinforces it, the use of at least some female pronouns challenges it. There is no requirement for a rulebook to perfectly echo the wargaming hobby. Why shouldn't it present a more inclusive perspective?

There actually seems to be some acknowledgement of this fact in the second paragraph that advise the writer to use the gender neutral term "the player" wherever possible. But this admitted begrudgingly, given the following statement that anything other than he/him is somehow incongruous. It may be technically correct that 'he' can be used neutrally, but it acknowledges that this isn't true in practice. Plus, it misses that the fact that 'he' was ever the default is itself a product of a male-dominant language

I'll concede the point that the use of "they" could be confusing in the context of a two player game in which you potentially have to distinguish between something both players should do or one player should do. But, I don't understand what is supposed to be so confusing or 'unsettling' about alternating between male and female in each paragraph. It might be odd in the context of an example of game play in which players were listed by name, but when the terms are being used in the abstract, I think most readers will be able to cope. If alternating by paragraph is so difficult, why not by chapter or, radical thought, just use she or her throughout. Or would that be too painful? While the statement that it is unsettling seems to only be there as a lead in to a crass joke.

Overall, the tone of the extract is unthinking male privilege. It acknowledges that rule books should avoid gendered pronouns were possible and then casually undermines it by operating on the basis that being male is simply the default and anything else is unusual. It offers no evidence for the claims that using female pronouns is 'painful' or that alternating is 'confusing' or 'unsettling' and then includes an outdated and crass joke about changing sex that adds nothing of value.

I haven't read any more of the book than this extract, so I don't anything about the quality of the rest of it but, based on this, it seems to be one to avoid.

In another time and place

No progress on the Siege Campaign to report, largely because I spent 12 days in Japan. It was a good trip, pretty packed taking in four cities and Hakone national park and riding the bullet train five times.

Japan is generally thought to be a very different culture, but there are some parallels with the UK. Both are Island nations*, with a strong naval tradition. There island status makes them just far removed enough from the nearby mainland to feel somewhat apart from it, while still being heavily influenced by it. Both are obsessed with manors and class. Both punch above their weight culturally. And then there's the question of modelling.

While in Kyoto I visited the International Manga Museum (strongly recommended if you get the chance), which was holding a temporary exhibition about model kits. Sadly, photography was banned, so I couldn't get any pictures. But the exhibition was a mix of historical dioramas and customised giant robot kits, all painted to a standard comparable to the best professional painters of wargaming figures I have seen. Each artist's area was accompanied by a large black and white photo of them at work with a comment about the ideas and influences in three languages. It was a bit pretentious, but interesting that the modellers were being treated as serious artists.

Not far from the Museum was a basement shop selling a substantial range of model kits, along with the tools and paints needed to put them together and a number of glossy magazines about the hobby. You can see from these what Games Workshop was trying to achieve with Warhammer Visions, even if they have a long way to go to reach the Japanese standard of magazine production.

The kits on offer ranged from historical vehicles, to giant robots from various series, video-game, manga and anime characters. Conspicuous by its total absence, was any kind of wargame rules. There is simply no home-grown wargaming hobby in Japan at all. This is not to say there is no gaming. Trading card games, from Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon to western imports like Magic the Gathering are hugely popular and there are stores selling board games. I even found one with a range of western imports like Ticket to Ride and Small World. But wargaming has little or no traction.

I visited Japan once before in 2010 and, during that trip, stumbled across Tokyo Games Workshop and even found a few shops with a scattering of GW paints and models. All of this seems to have died away since my last trip and wargaming has, if anything, even less of a presence than before.

The latest issue of Miniature Wargames Magazine includes an article reminding gamers that you don't need perfectly painted models to play a game and advocating a simpler painting style. My trip to Japan reminds us that the opposite is also true. That you can collect and paint models quite happily without ever playing a game with them.

Although, in the UK, we automatically associate collecting and painting models with wargaming, Japan reminds us that there are really two separate hobbies here and that, in another time and place, one can exist without the other being present at all.

*Actually archipelagos dominated by a large central island

Conventions, spending money and having too many models

No further updates on the siege campaign this week. I am still painting stuff for the final assault, but progress has been a bit slow and I am on holiday soon for a week and a half, which will slow things down even more.

So this post won't be about that and will probably be something of a ramble across a few areas I have touched on before.

I was at Salute, the UK's biggest independent war games show, a few weeks back. I'm not going to write a review, there are plenty all over the Internet better than I would have written.

I have been going to Salute for ten years now; my first was in 2006. I have been to a lot of conventions during that time and spent a lot of money at them. But Salute was always the big event and I always took the most money. Even after deciding to significantly reduce my spending at conventions, I have still taken more money to Salute than to any of the others.

What was a little unusual about this Salute was that I had no plan about what I was going to buy. AT every Salute I went with at least a short shopping list, even if I took more money than I needed for a few impulse buys. This year, no list. Consequently, I ended up buying a fairly random selection of models that I may use at some point for future projects.

Inevitably, once the show was over, I questioned why I had bought what I bought. It's not that I regret spending the money, exactly, but why those things at that time? I already have plenty of projects to complete. Here is a list of potential projects I could work on when the Siege campaign is done:

- Three different Warhammer armies
- One army for Warhammer 40,000
- At least four factions for Otherworld Fantasy skirmish
- An historical Samurai campaign for Ronin
- A Lord of the Rings campaign
- A campaign for Lion Rampant involving 11th century Normans

These are all projects for which I have all the models I need. And it isn't even an exhaustive list.

Putting it simply, I could never buy another model again and I would still have more than enough to keep me going for years.

So why buy more stuff at Salute?

Part of the problem, is that I am not naturally suited to the social aspects of conventions. I am naturally introverted and feel uncomfortable with people I don't know. I also have to psych myself up before playing games and don't enjoy playing lots of games in a day. This is not very compatible with playing pick up and demo games at conventions. I tried entering a tournament at the last UK Games Expo and, while everyone involved was perfectly pleasant, friendly and good sports, it just wasn't for me. Eight hours of one game in a day is beyond my stamina level.

So, naturally, at conventions I gravitate towards the dealers.

This isn't the only problem. I have written before about how our hobby offers few opportunities for instant gratification. Buying new models is one of them. Sometimes buying a new model can be a substitute for assembling, painting and gaming with the ones I already have.

Lastly, the is the problem of staying up to date. A couple of years ago, when I decided to spend less money on new models, I stopped visiting a lot of the wargaming news websites and blogs. The idea was to avoid temptation. But it is impossible to stay involved in the hobby, reading the forums and the magazines, without learning about new models and games. Despite having made a conscious commitment to avoid new games, a small number have slipped through the net. Part of the problem is that, as I get older, I don't want to be one of those people who ignores everything that was invented after they turned 35. But to keep up with new games and models you have to buy them.

So what have I learned from all of this? I am serious about wanting to reduce my spending on new models. Not because of the money spent, but because I don't want to keep using up space on models that never get used. I want to finish the projects I start, or at least start the projects I planned. But if I am going to do that this may mean I have to accept a couple of things.

1. I need to go to fewer conventions, or at least find other reasons to go than to spend money.
2. If I'm not buying new things, then I am increasingly going to be playing with older games and models. And if that means this starts to look like a retro blog, I'll have to accept that.

Kickstarter and rules development

Just recently, GCT games released the revised rules for their Ninja-themed boardgame Rise of the Kage to Kickstarter backers. Personally, I didn't think the first version was that bad, though it was very poorly explained. But the reaction suggests that a lot of people were deeply unhappy with the first version and this was a very welcome move.

One of the more obnoxious features of modern computer and video games is the tendency of some companies to release what are quite obviously an unfinished product, secure in the knowledge that they can later release a patch online to fix problems.* With the revised Rise of the Kage rules, we may be seeing wargames and boardgames going down the same path.

This highlights one of the problems with Kickstarters, the tendency to fixate on deadlines. GCT hit their deadline, more or less, and managed to get most copies of the game out to backers during August and September 2015, the deadline had been August 2015. But it looks like they achieved this at the cost of less than fully play-tested rules.

Mantic games seem to have adopted a variation on this strategy. Having been a backing of their original Kings of War Kickstarter, I was more than slightly irritated when, less than two years later, they launched a Kickstarter for the second edition. They are now planning a new edition of Deadzone. With so little time between Kickstarters, this suggests that Mantic are releasing less than fully tested rules and fixing them in subsequent Kickstarters.

Part of the problem is that different companies use Kickstarter in different ways. Some have an almost fully developed product and use Kickstarter as a glorified pre-order system, while others use it in a much more speculative fashion, asking pledgers to risk funds without a guaranteed return. The problem is that the first use has come to dominate the thinking of pledgers and the media. I remember an article a while back on the subject of successful and unsuccessful Kickstarters, with success defined almost entirely on whether the product was delivered on time.

In the case of GCT, there seems to be a second problem. One of the original concepts for Rise of the Kage was that all models would have two states. Ninja would either be detected or undetected and guards would be alert or unalert. The new rules have completely dropped the concept of alert and unalert guards because they couldn't find a way to make the two states work without the rules becoming too complicated. When such a fundamental element of the game can be dropped because it doesn't work, it suggests that the rules were never very well developed in the first place. I wonder if the problem was that the companies focus was entirely on production, the possibility of producing models in different coloured plastic, with game mechanics being left as an afterthought.

I have sworn off Kickstarter, having come to the conclusion that I didn't get much more value out of my pledges than I would have done by waiting for the official release. But it looks like Kickstarter may also be a bad way to develop good rules.

*Or at least in most cases, the PC version of Batman Arkham Knight was ultimately abandoned because the problems couldn't be fixed.

Is Lord of the Rings reactionary?

A bit of a departure today, prompted by a line from this blog post:
http://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/star-wars-as-counterfactual-history.html
It's well worth a read if you're interested in an interesting and somewhat provocative take on the Star Wars films. But what drew my attention was the description of the Lord of the Rings as a "reactionary fantasy", which left me wondering how true that was.

Certainly Tolkien himself was an instinctive conservative, to the point that when the Catholic Church switched the liturgy from Latin to English, he carried on reciting it in Latin regardless. Though, interestingly, Tolkien characterised his own political views as a combination of anarchism and monarchism. As far as I can see that means a King with ultimate political power who is wise enough not try and use it to actually do anything. This attitude is certainly reflected in Tolkien treatment of the Shire, in many ways Tolkien preferred idea of society. The hobbits elect a mayor, but his principle role is to preside over banquets, while the closest thing the hobbits have to a police force, the shirrifs, are mostly interested in wondering about gathering news and gossip. When the someone tries to actively change things in the Shire, it all goes horribly wrong.

In many ways this is the instinctive conservatism of the comfortably off, thinking that the world is just fine the way it is and everything would be okay if everyone was just left alone. This allows you to ignore the fundamental injustices and inequalities in the world and insist that everyone would be better off if they understood their place.

However, despite Tolkien's overt political views, there is an undercurrent in the Lord of the Rings that works against this. The principle goal of the characters in LOTR is the destruction of the One Ring, but the overall theme is of the last days of a heroic and magical age. Along with the destruction of the Ring and the Dark Lord Sauron, the more magical races, the elves, the dwarves and even the hobbits will go into decline, with humans becoming ascendant, the Wizards will also depart and the more magical and fantastic elements of the world pass away. This dichotomy is most firmly stated by Galadriel

"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten."

The Lord of the Rings, Book 2, Chapter 7, The Mirror of Galadriel

In spite of this, there is never any question that the destruction of the Ring is anything other than a good and necessary thing. Discussions of trying to hide the ring are quickly glossed over and its emphasised again and again that the ring cannot be used for good. When the ring is finally destroyed the tone is entirely celebratory.

"This is the ending. Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fears pass away!"

Frodo, The Lord of the Rings, Book 6, Chapter 5, The Steward and the King

So the passing of the old magical world into a new more mundane but safer one is regarded as a good thing, despite the loss of the positive aspects of the old.

Tolkien's attitude to the hobbits is similarly ambivalent. The hobbits are treated as peaceful and harmless but, with a few notable exceptions, parochial, prejudiced and xenophobic. A humorous touch in the first book of LOTR has the inhabitants of Hobbiton repeatedly describing the people of Buckland, on the other side of the Shire as "queer folk", but as soon as Frodo and his friends reach Buckland they hear the Bucklanders using the same term to describe the people of Hobbiton. Frodo himself sums up this contradiction.

"I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again."

The Lord of the Rings, Book 1, Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past

In spite of this, Frodo ultimately fails. He is not able to stop the War of the Ring touching the Shire and returns to find it ruined. And yet, the hobbits rally round, defeat their enemies and become a broader minded people as a result, albeit in a small way. If you read the Appendices to LOTR, it is revealed that following the events in the main story, the hobbits expanded the Shire, settling to the west and that the King ultimately visited, setting up his court to the east of the Shire for over a year. If the hobbits didn't exactly embrace the outside world, they at least grudgingly accepted its existence.

Tolkien disliked the the term allegory, preferring the term applicability. But if we apply the ideas of the Lord of the Rings to the real world, what does it say? That, ultimately, we have to deal with problems and can't just ignore them and that we cannot defend the status quo regardless of the consequences. That change will occur, but that this is not inherently negative. I'm not sure this can be regarded as a reactionary message.

A new one just begun

Happy New Year one and all.

The first day of the new year seems as good time as any to reflect on the previous 12 months. I don't know if I got more painting done in 2015 than 2014, but what I did do was more focused. I kept up the rule of sticking to one project at a time, but chose projects that would let me actually play games with a minimum amount of effort. Consequently, I played a lot more games in 2015.

I started the year with a short Bushido campaign, before moving to historical Japan with Ronin, before starting my Warhammer siege campaign at the end of the year. I even entered my first tournament, Bushido at the UK Games Expo. I mostly learnt that I am not much of a tournament gamer (I came last) but it was an interesting experience, and added to my total of games played. So I played more games in 2015 than in 2014, and more at the end of the year than the beginning. If this trend continues, that should mean even more games in 2016.

 The culmination of a mini-campaign

As for painting, I'm not sure my standard particularly improved in 2015, but I do seem to be able to paint faster. I discovered that, with a bit of focus, I could get a 20 model unit for Warhammer done in a couple of weekends.

 Dwarf Longbeards. It either took me 2 days or 19 years to paint them, depending on your point of view.

Speaking of Warhammer, possibly the biggest wargaming event of 2015 was Games Workshop's killing of the Warhammer world and the Warhammer game system. After some initial reluctance, I had a crack at Warhammer Age of Sigmar and discovered it was not a bad system, but not one I was likely to be playing all that often. Age of Sigmar's principle impact was to prompt me to buy the last models I wanted for my Warhammer armies and investigate other fantasy rules. That AOS has been such a departure from Warhammer has prompted a lot philosophical musing on wargaming in general.

 My first trial of the Age of Sigmar rules looks pretty much like Warhammer without the formations.

As Games Workshop has recast itself as a miniature company rather than a games company, other companies have rushed to fill the void. In addition to Mantic Games Kings of War 2nd edition and the forthcoming Warpath, Warlord Games finally released Rick Priestly's Warhammer 40,000 beater,  Beyond the Gates of Antares. At the same time, Osprey's range of generic wargame rules continues to expand, and they have now produced Dragon Rampant. Former Warhammer addicts are spoiled for choice.

Oddly, this range of new rules doesn't encourage me to buy more models, so much as dig out and make use of old ones. I have a huge range of Warhammer models, less than half of which are painted and most of which I can use for several different games. Warhammer's "death" has also encouraged me to dig out some models for other "dead" systems, such as Confrontation, Epic and Anima Tactics.

So what can we expect for 2016? Personally, I plan to do more painting and gaming and less buying. In the past I often used to use buying more models as a substitute for actually using them, no that I'm painting and gaming more I don't need to buy so much. That said, I do plan to acquire a few more bits and bobs for Beyond the Gates of Antares, as I haven't played a decent 28mm large skirmish sci-fi game in a while and I have no interest in Warhammer 40,000 in its current state.

 Out with the old, in with the new?

As for the wider industry, Games Workshop seems determined to abdicate its position as the introduction into the hobby for new players. If that is the case, then this is likely to encourage other companies to fill the role. I am expecting to see a lot of activity from the likes of Warlord, Mantic, Privateer Press and other player bubbling just below Games Workshop. Not to mention Fantasy Flight games, whose range of Star Wars games is a perfect position to attract the multitude of Star Wars fans energised by the new film. 2016 could be an eventful year for the wargames world.

Points mean prizes

Bear with me, this one is going to be a bit of a ramble.

The other day I was thinking about Games Workshop's new Archaon model (it takes me 15 minutes to walk from the station to work, my mind tends to wander). I was thinking about how effective he might actually be on the table. My, so far limited, experience of Age of Sigmar is that individual models are not as effective as you might think because they can overwhelmed by units that can roll a lot more dice.

I then thought, but could a unit of Stormcast Eternals roll enough dice to finish off Archaon before he annihilated them? But then I thought, Archaon costs £100, you can get nearly three boxes of Stormcast for that.

And then the revelation hit me. If you want a points system for Age of Sigmar, why not just use pounds? It's good enough for most game shows.

I am not being even slightly flippant or facetious. I genuinely think this could work. Though this wasn't always the case. Back in Warhammer 4th and 5th edition, the proliferation of special characters meant that for about £5 you could pick up a single model that could destroy a unit single-handedly. Then as Games Workshop increasingly used a mix of metal and plastic, cheap plastic units could be far more effective than bulky metal special units. But as the company has shifted to producing pretty much everything in plastic, they have also shifted to producing larger models in plastic and developing rules to justify the price of the model. This became most apparent during the end times when the super sized characters, Nagash, the Glottkin, the Verminlord and the Bloodthirster all cost multiple hundreds of points to justify their cash you had to shell out to get them. The development of the new Archaon model seems to have been driven by this trend. Only a model of this size could justify the plethora of special rules required for the Lord High Grand Poobah of Chaos (or whatever they're calling him these days).

Put simply, expensive models tend to be worth more on the battlefield.

Of course there would have to be some adjustments. The prices used would have to be based on the current Games Workshop prices, not discounts from third party retailers. And, if you wanted to use old models, you would have to base the cost on the versions currently available from Games Workshop. My 20 old Dwarf Longbeards cost me £25 when I bought them, but to replace them with the new versions would cost £60, and so that's their Age of Sigmar cost.

Possibly the most difficult models would be the ones in the starter box, which is generally considered to be excellent value for money. Fortunately, the bulk of the models included can now be obtained separately and the rest can probably be calculated based on their size. You would also have to do some adjustments if you wanted to use any models from Forge World.

I'll admit its a bit crude and not entirely balanced, but then what points system is? Certainly not Warhammer 8th edition (and probably not Warhammer 40,000 7th edition). But I'm guessing this would work at least as well as a system based around wounds.

So who's for a £500 game?

Unconventional Armies

I have been reading the story section of the Tamurkhan book recently. Yes, it has taken me nearly four years. I had read the rules and all the Chaos Dwarf background stuff, I just hadn't read the main story.

It's actually quite a good read, albeit a touch overwritten, with some of it trying a bit too hard to sound epic. But it does a good job of presenting a series of battles, across a variety of locations clearly and without getting too repetitive.

The story describes Tamurkhan and his armies journey across the Warhammer World, starting in the Northern Chaos wastes, before travelling South through the Ogre Kingdoms, west across the Dark Lands, into the Border Princes and then attacking the Empire from the South. In the course of the story, the Chaos Horde fights a variety of foes, including a few quite unconventional armies, such as a tribe of Mutant Savage Orcs living close the Chaos Wastes and an army of Ghouls and giant worms, lead by a Dragon that they worship as a God.

It's a welcome reminder that not every army in the Warhammer World fitted into the narrow confines of the published army books. When Warhammer 3rd edition was published, these sharp restrictions between armies did not exist. The points system was written as a tool box, allowing you to build your own custom troop types and then combine them to produce extremely varied armies. If you wanted your humans to hire Ogre mercenaries you could. If your dwarfs formed an unlikely alliance with a tribe of Giants, no problem. Want to field a Chaos horde allied with the undead followers of an ambitious Necromancer, go ahead.

All of this started to die out with the publication of  the original Warhammer Armies book. Although the book was intended to provide strict army lists for tournament and competitive games, in practice everyone started following its rules. When fourth edition was published, the practice started of publishing individual army books for each army, and the divisions between them became crystallised. By the end of eighth edition, virtually every model was part of a specific army and could be used in that army alone.

In fact, this has become standard practice in most games developed by miniature manufacturers to support a specific range of models. War Machine, Kings of War, Malifaux, Infinity, Bushido and so on, all feature rigidly defined factions with each model being a member of a specific faction (though most also include a range of unaligned models usable by all). This means that each faction has its own aesthetic and play style, but doesn't lend itself to player creativity.

In contrast, rules sets that are not attached to a specific range of miniatures, such as Song of Blades and Heroes, Hordes of the Things or Dragon Rampant, necessarily offer players a great deal of freedom to build their own troop types and army lists from a range of types. When your game does not have its own range of models, it pays to make it work with as many different manufacturers as possible.

But the release of Age of Sigmar may have shifted Warhammer armies back the other way. The latest issue of Warhammer Visions features an alliance of Undead and Elves* which combines Dark Elf and High Elf miniatures and includes Elves mounted on Demi Gryphs. I don't know if their owner has made his own warscrolls for these, but I certainly hope so.

If throwing out the old army books and points values leads to more creative army building, I am very much in favour of it. Sadly, Games Workshop has already released two "Battle Tomes" that are almost army books, even if they feature no points costs. Hopefully, as Age of Sigmar develops, Games Workshop won't reimpose a needless division between armies.

*I don't know what an Aelf is and I don't want to know

Considering radical options

I promise I'll try to move on from this Age of Sigmar stuff. I'm sure this is the last post, or maybe the second to last.

Anyway, I stumbled across the following post 

http://www.corehammer.com/self-reflection-in-the-age-of-sigmar-brinton-williams/

As interesting as the post is, I am more interested in the comments. It seems to me that reaction to Age of Sigmar can be divided into two camps and the two are largely talking across one another.

One side is pretty angry with Games Workshop for dropping a game, and a game world, that they largely liked. They see it as deeply cynical, motivated only by a desire for short-term profit. Viewing Age of Sigmar from that mind set you are bound to see it in negative terms. The other view point is that, for better or worse, Games Workshop had produced a new set of rules and we may as well see what we can get out of them. Games Workshop's motivation may have been cynical, but that doesn't actively make the game bad and we may as well judge the game on its own merits.

The two sides are not really talking to each other because one is motivated by a desire to see Games Workshop fail because they feel they deserve it, while the other doesn't really care about Games Workshop at all and just ones to play a game or not based on its own merits.

It occurs to me that my last post on Age of Sigmar was very much from the second perspective, demanding that Games Workshop not be allowed to spin their behaviour however they choose.

So this post is an attempt to look at Age of Sigmar from a more optimistic bent. The corehammer post above makes the point that we have to view AOS as redefining the the kind of experience we expect from a wargame. With that in mind, two thoughts occurred to me.

The first is that Age of Sigmar all but invites you to make up your own rules. This occurred to me when I was looking through the Warriors of Chaos war scroll and looking at how to represent my Nurgle Champion on Palaquin. According to the "official" rules, he should be treated as a Chaos Lord on a Daemonic steed. This doesn't sit well with me, Daemonic steed are faster, stronger and tougher than Palanquins, while Palanquins have more wounds and attacks. But the Daemons of Chaos war scroll includes rules for Epidimus and his Palanquin, so why not splice the two together? But while I'm at it, why not make up your own rules for any or even all your units to put your personal spin on them. Games Workshop have removed a lot of the old weapon and upgrade options, as well as throwing out magic items, chaos rewards, vampire bloodlines etc. So why not make up your own?

Of course, you always could make up your own rules, but this never squared well with the old points based system, in which the default mode was to play to a set points value based on the restrictions of an army list. If you knew and trusted your opponent you could start playing with rules and scenarios, but this was not standard behaviour. But now, with points gone, the only option available is to trust your opponent. And if you trust them to bring along a sensible, balanced collection of models, why not trust them to invent their own rules..

I'm thinking of practicing my photo shop skills and making some proper war scrolls specifically for my models.

My second thought occurred to me when considering that Age of Sigmar is largely unsuitable for competitive games. With that in mind, why not throw out the rules altogether? There is venerable history in the Roleplaying game community of playing with no written rules at all and having game play develop based on a negotiation between player and Games Master. This produces a different kind of game, and one that will not work if the players (including the GM) are at all adversarial, but it is still a valid activity.

Could we have a situation in which two players play out a scenario, devised by a games master, who determines the outcome of all combat based on his or her judgement of the situation? It could still involve dice rolling if you like, but the GM decides what dice to roll and the outcome. For example, "well those Orcs are fighting uphill in difficult ground against human spearmen. On the other hand, the spearmen have suffered heavy casualties and are pretty demoralised. I think you have a 35% chance of victory, roll a D100". Again, this is heavily based on trust, but we need that to enjoy a game with no points. If we don't need points, why do we need any of the rest?

Plenty of wargamers have described their hobby as "playing with toy soldiers" their tongues only partly in their cheeks, but why not take this to its logical conclusion and dispense with the rules?

What we will tolerate

Last weekend I came across this really interesting blog http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/, its largely about third edition Warhammer with an emphasis on Chaos and is written by someone who is clearly a stalwart of the "OldHammer" community*. It has lots of nice pictures of old Games Workshop miniatures, reviews of old White Dwarfs, interviews with the Games Workshop old guard and reports of OldHammer events. Its focus is on a period from just before I started wargaming to my earliest days, so it really plays to my nostalgia. Plus, its emphasis on returning to older models and rules is exactly where I am at the moment.

I love this blog and I want to emphasise that because I don't want what follows to come across as criticism, because I think it illustrates something interesting.

Unsurprisingly, the writer is not a big fan of recent editions of Warhammer or the current direction of Games Workshop as a company. It doesn't seem to break out into outright hostility; the focus of the blog is looking at Games Workshop's old products, not complaining about their current ones.

You can get a sense of the tone by reading this post See http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-fall-of-white-dwarf-and-death-of.html

"Still, modern Fantasy Battle has lost much of its vibrancy with zoats, elementals, Nipponese, Norse and even the controversial pygmies no longer supported or discussed."

On the other hand, in this post, discussing White Dwarfs 100 and 101 it strikes a rather different tone.

"The times are clearly a-changing, a fact not missed in the letter pages of these mighty magazine, with readers commenting that WD has rapidly become a 'house magazine' focusing on GW and Citadel products rather than pure roleplaying. But as we know now, sales of roleplaying games were in serious decline while sales of fantasy, and science fiction, wargames were rapidly on the rise."

Games Workshop shifted from focusing on Roleplaying games, and distributing other companies products, to a focus on miniature games. And White Dwarf went from being a general Roleplaying and games magazine to being exclusively focused on Games Workshop products in an uncritical fashion. This change, which is largely glossed over in the post, was a source of great anger and bitterness for a large number of players.

The only comment offered about this change is that sales of roleplaying games were in serious decline. This isn't surprising as the post is a review of old White Dwarfs, not a critique of Games Workshops sales strategy. However, shortly before third edition Warhammer was retired in favour of fourth edition, Warhammer sales had been stagnant. The launch of the new edition prompted a sales spike.Similarly, Warhammer sales have been in chronic decline for some years now, prompting Games Workshop to launch Age of Sigmar. Whether this will increase sales again remains to be seen.

Games Workshop has actually been remarkably consistent in it's policies:

• Roleplaying game sales were in decline, so it shifted its focus to wargaming.
• Third edition Warhammer sales were in decline, so it launched fourth edition.
• Eighth edition Warhammer sales were in decline, so it launched Age of Sigmar.

I have a theory that we all have our favourite periods in wargaming history, the period about which we are most nostalgic. In practice we excuse or ignore those commercial decisions that took place before that period, the ones that got us to that point, and criticise the ones that came after, the ones that took us away from it. So, abandoning RPGs was acceptable, because it lead to third edition Warhammer, launching fourth edition was not because it took us away from it.

Not that the realmofchaos80s blog spends a lot of time castigating Games Workshops current commercial decisions, it's far more concerned with its focus on old Games Workshop for that, but the tacit approval of a fairly ruthless economic decision stood out for me in the face of all the nostalgia.

It also reminded me that its an attitude I have adopted from time to time. I can't pretend that my current disinterest in Age of Sigmar is not, at least partly, motivated by Games Workshop decision to effectively mothball a game I have enjoyed in favour of launching a completely new one.

Food for thought.

*Basically a group of players interested in past editions of Warhammer, usually 3rd edition and earlier

A little honesty

I was in a branch of Games Workshop* the other day and got chatting to the staff member in charge about Age of Sigmar. He rather generously allowed me to have a look at the new great, big book before its official release date.

While we were talking he made a comment that during a recent Age of Sigmar test game, a player who was something of a power gamer brought along an army with a large number of summonable daemon units and proceeded to wipe the floor with his opponents. After the game they had a conversation and the power-gamer admitted that he hadn't had much fun and reconsidered what he was trying to achieve from the game.

On the face of it, this is just a neat little story about the way Age of Sigmar is supposed to play and the way in which players have to approach it in order to get some value out of it. But, delve a little deeper, and I think it says something about the direction Games Workshop is heading.

Before I go any further, have a look at this article

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/40k-safe-sane-and-consensual-or-the-arrogance-of-unacknowledged-playstyles.html

The article is basically about how different sorts of players have to approach one another and show tolerance of one anothers play styles and is well worth a read. It's probably better than anything I have written, so take your time. This post will still be here when you get back.

Anyway, the part I want to borrow from the article is the author's division of gamers into three basic types.

1. Competitive or tournament players - whose focus is on a contest of tactical skill and whose goal is to win.
2. Narrative players - whose focus is telling a story and have some relationship to roleplayers.
3. Casual or social players - whose main interest is in having an activity to share with their friends.

It's a fairly basic division, and there is certainly some overlap between the three categories, but it will do for my purpose.

For some years now, Games Workshop has been trying to shift its attention from players or type 1, to those of types 2 and 3 and Age of Sigmar is probably the apogee of this. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this, any more than there is anything wrong with being one of the three categories (I am pretty firmly in category 2).

However, Games Workshop are not a player, they are a company. And they are not choosing to play a type of game, they are providing a product.

Games Workshop's shift in focus two gamer types 2 and 3 has been characterised by two major developments. One is the tendency of staff, both in shops and in the studio, describing gamer type 1 using more prejudicial language. "Competitive" or "Tournament" gamer has given way to "Power" gamer. The other, is that the rules have gotten vaguer.

There have been complaints dating back for years that Games Workshops rules are unbalanced, that certain army lists are broken (either by being too good or too bad), that certain army builds dominate and that errata and FAQ are not frequently updated.

This is in part because keeping rules balanced is hard. It takes time and effort to play test everything properly and you are still likely to get flak from a community that can be very demanding. It's not surprising that Games Workshop would rather jack that in in favour of a game that isn't supposed to be balanced in the first place.

But, by not trying to produce a game that works for competitive players, Games Workshop are providing less of a product than they used to. Lets face it, no narrative focused or casual gamer has ever complained that these rules are just too fair and balanced. In practice, type 1 gamers are the hardest to satisfy because their demands are greater and, because they are more quantifiable, it's easier to judge when a game fails to meet them.

With Age of Sigmar, Games Workshop has basically thrown in the towel. By throwing out points values, or indeed any guidance on army composition, they have basically declared that they aren't even trying to make a balanced game. Play testing can go out of the window, because there is no expectation that any model won't be more or less powerful than any other. This isn't necessarily wrong, but it should be clear what Games Workshop has done.

Games Workshop has a very "creative" attitude to the truth. I remember when the Specialist Games department was down-sized, left with only one employee, no new products after six months and its magazine was cancelled, and Games Workshop announced "Good news, Specialist games has a new online focus" mentioning all the rest in small print.

What I think Games Workshop is doing with Age of Sigmar is announcing that it is no longer even pretending to support competitive gamers, no longer interested in game balance and no longer bothering to play test its games, and hiding it behind their "Great new focus on narrative games".

If you don't care about that and like Age of Sigmar any way that is absolutely fine, but don't let Games Workshop pretend that they are doing anything else.

*One of the ones that still is a Games Workshop and not a Warhammer shop

The Magpie game

The more I look at Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the more I find myself thinking of another game.This is most obviously illustrated by looking at the box art.

While many people have seen similarities to Warhammer 40,000*, the image it most reminds me of is this:

It's not just the art style, which emphasises bold and heavily saturated colours with a lot of gold and red (in contrast to Isle of Blood's more muted shades), but also that we seem to have zoomed right into the action as opponents pile in on top of each other, and yet the action is frozen at the moment before impact, reflecting the models who can only pose at each other and never actually fight.

This isn't the only influence from Warmachine. The scale of the game, with an emphasis on heroes and large individuals with a handful of units of about five to ten models, is also similar. As is the idea of an ongoing narrative. The new book is not a core rulebook but "the first part of the ongoing narrative: The Realmgate Wars". Though, unlike Privateer Press, Games Workshop hasn't made any attempt to keep the cost down.

But it's easy to see the influence of more than just Warmachine. Having abandoned using tables to find hit and wound rolls, models no have a standard to hit and to wound value that does not vary according to their opponents, exactly in the style of Kings of War. The bravery system, in which the number of models killed is added to the bravery roll is also reminiscent of KoW.

The lack of points values and the expectation that players discuss what they want to achieve from the game recalls Black Powder and Hail Caesar. Both of these emphasise player discussion and co-operation to achieve a goal from the gaming experience, rather than a simple competition.

The scenarios from the leaked Tournament guide will be very familiar to Bushido players, from their preference for circular control zones in groups of two or three to the distribution of victory points at fixed intervals. Not to mention the abstract nature of the scenarios and the fact that their titles appear to have little to do with the scenario itself.

Finally, the new "Warhammer world" with its abstract realms and portals and its apparent lack of a fixed geography and focus on daemonic and mystical beings seems to recall Helldorado.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. The previous Warhammer world borrowed elements from other fantasy games, novels and films and squashed them all together. Games Workshop could certainly do worse than borrow the best bits from a number of different games. The question at this stage is whether they have the right ingredients, the right recipe and the necessary skill to bring it all together.

*I like to think of it as Warhammer 40,000: European Edition (or Warhammer 40,000 without the guns).

Possibly flatly contradicting myself

Over the past few days I have read a few posts on forums from people trying out Age of Sigmar and the consensus seems to be that it's actually quite fun, if a bit rough around the edges.

Then I read this post on the Too Much Lead blog which suggests that Games Workshop intend to keep the rules permanently free and to never introduce point values. Both of which come across as quite daring and interesting manoeuvres. And that GW really want this to work and are interested in feedback.

Looking over the free "War Scrolls" for the existing Warhammer armies it also looks like pretty much everything I own does have rules and I wouldn't have to do any real re-organising of my armies (I might cut down the size of some units a bit, but that's all).

So if the rules are actually reasonably fun and very open to customisation, and I don't need to buy any new models, why not give it a go? I  have no interest in the Age of Sigmar background with its Realms, its Eternals, its Orruks and its Aelfs, but who cares? As far as the rules are concerned it doesn't matter where the game is set.

And, if I don't have to revise my armies, then it may prove complementary to Warhammer 8th edition and I can keep playing both.

I'm still more interested in Dragon Rampant, mind you.

The Best of Times or the Worst of Times?

After months of faffing around, Games Workshop have finally revealed Warhammer 9th edition or "Age of Sigmar" (very much the Windows 10 of the wargaming world).

"The End Times" was never going to attract me in a big way because I don't react quickly to wargaming trends. I always sit around for a few months, or even years, before embarking on a new project so a range of models and rule books that were always intended to be very short-lived and quickly superseded by the next big thing were never going to work for me. That said, I approve of the idea of turning the end of an edition into as big an event as the start of one, even if it is an excuse to flog as many old models as possible before starting again.

Now that the new version is out we can see how accurate the rumour mill was and it looks like even the most extreme rumours were true. Pretty much everything has been thrown out, right down to the Warhammer world itself. After eight editions of minor tweaks and updates, everything has been thrown out, right down to square bases. The new game is leaner, simpler and very much skirmish based with units of five to ten models and standard and a more substantial role for heroes. There are free rules for all the old models for the moment, but the new models have a completely different aesthetic, looking more like Warhammer 40,000 without the guns.

There's a lot of anger on the internet at the moment with the simplification. The new rules are only four pages long and very straight forward. Games Workshop seem to have taken inspiration from Warmachine in terms of scale, but their rules are much simpler. Rumour mill currently has it that a more substantial rule book will be coming soon, but unless it is completely different from these starter rules, it will still be a radical departure from everything that has gone before.

I actually give Games Workshop credit for being this bold. They seem to be embracing their rule as the first port of call for new wargamers aged 10 - 12, with a rules set that is straight forward, uncomplicated and can be played with a small group of models. They seem to have recognised that eight edition's great misstep was pushing ever big armies with bigger units that no normal person could afford to collect. It is, once again, possible to buy a single box and have a usable unit. And the enhanced importance of heroes goes some way towards justifying their disproportionate monetary cost.

Having said that, I don't think I will be bothering with the new edition.

Partly this is due to the tone and style. I have been a Warhammer player for roughly 25 years and I had got used to its generic fantasy world with a twist. Games Workshop took the standard Hollywood Medieval style of Dungeons and Dragons, moved the technology level to late medieval and added a touch of black humour. Over time it had become more cartoon-like and more exaggerated, but the core had remained. There was still a touch stone of the Warhammer world grounded in the real lives of real people. Although it was nowhere near as accomplished, I always felt it had a quality similar to the Discworld with real people in a fantastic situation who, nevertheless, behaved like real people. But the Warhammer world was also broad enough to embrace a wide range of fantasy types, so it could take in Arthurian mythology, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, a version of Chaos taken largely from Michael Morcock and gothic horror without any of it feeling entirely out of place. Plus, at its best it had a sense of humour about itself.

The new reality of galaxy spanning wars across multiple dimensions doesn't really work for me, and sounds suspiciously similar to Warhammer 40,000.

But the main reason I won't bother is because this is simply a new game and I have no interest in starting a new game. I have something like seven different Warhammer armies built between fourth and eighth edition, none of which may be particularly tactically optimal, but all of which are playable. I have no desire to rework them for a new set of rules, especially when I have so many unpainted models for other games and other projects demanding my attention.

So for me, it's a no to Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

And yet this is strangely liberating. Eight edition Warhammer is now a "dead" game in the same way as Epic, Mordheim, Necromunda or Blood Bowl. Which means it's free of Games Workshop, there will be no new rules or model releases and I can simply concentrate on the models I already own (with one or two last minute editions while they are still available). Given Games Workshop's focus on new players I doubt I will be missed.

So this is not a farewell to Warhammer exactly, but rather the point at which I part company with Games Workshop. It will carry on in to the future with its version of Warhammer, while I stay put with mine.

UPDATE Just a small detail, but I think that daftest thing Games Workshop has done here is attempted to rename some of the most generic fantasy races so we now have Aelfs, Duardins, Grots and Orruks instead of Elves, Dwarfs, Goblins and Orcs. Presumably this is to make them easier to trademark, but I don't think they're fooling anyone. 

Where is Doctor Who Armada?

The Guardian newspaper have published a review of Star Wars Armada, Fantasy Flight games new fleet level starship game. I think this may be unprecedented. Mainstream newspapers and the BBC have published articles on Games Workshop before, but normally under business or human interest. By publishing a review, and a highly positive one at that, the Guardian are effectively saying to its readers, "here is something that you personally may want to purchase and use."

Fantasy Flight have been very canny here. Star Wars Armada, and its predecessor X-Wing, are effectively table top miniature games, albeit one that uses pre-assembled and pre-painted miniatures, but they are packaged and marketed like board games and sold in the sorts of shops that sell board games. Also, they have managed to do something that the previous producers of Star Wars miniatures failed to do, level Star Wars enormous pop-culture appeal to sell a miniature game to a mainstream audience. In years to come I can see a generation of wargamers cite Armada and X-Wing as the games that got them into the hobby in the way that my generation talks about Hero Quest.

All of this leads me to question why no-one has done the same thing with a British IP that has a similar cross-over appeal - Doctor Who.

Since it's return to television in 2005, Doctor Who has gone from being a huge fad to a respectable part of the UK television establishment. It may not score X-Factor busting audience figures, but it's ratings remain high and stable, especially when you take into account the large numbers watching online via Iplayer. More importantly, its place in pop culture is assured and no longer the butt of jokes.

Board games and card games have been produced based on Doctor Who but these have tended to be either focused on young children or variants of existing games like Monopoly or Top Trumps. There is a Doctor Who RPG but this has remained a specialist product only available in games shops or at conventions and there seems little hope that RPG's will re-enter the mainstream in the near future.

At the same time there have been dozens of unofficial "not Doctor Who" miniatures that the BBC either knows nothing about or has no interest in policing. There are at least four different versions of the 11th Doctor alone none of which are, technically, supposed to be him.

But a well designed, accessible, and well made Doctor Who miniature game could have genuine cross over appeal. It's the sort of thing that, long long ago, Games Workshop might have produced. Is there anyone left to try it now?

An Epic Scale Development

Oddly, since Games Workshop finally killing off Epic Armageddon, activity surrounding the games has, if anything increased. Troublemaker games are on their third Indiegogo campaign for miniatures that comfortably fill the niche abandoned by GW and Onslaught Miniatures are hard at work producing 6mm versions of every 40K army GW never bothered to touch.

Stranger than this is the fact that rule development is still continuing apace, over at the Epic Armageddon section of Tactical Command with new versions of army lists still being released.

Part of the reason for this is the legacy of Epic Armageddon's development, in which alpha versions of army lists would be released to the community for play testing, with changes incorporated into the official versions released in the rule books. When Games Workshop largely gave up on the game after only two books, there were still dozens of 40K armies without an army list and so development continued, initially on the Specialist Games website before moving when the site was killed off.

But with no more rulebooks being released, there can never be an official version of any army list. So the development continues without end in sight. More than that, with Games Workshop having abandoned the game there is no longer any final authority on what constitutes an official rule. So, instead of these representing new versions of the same list progressing towards a final version, what we actually have is an endless stream of army list variants. After all, if you prefer, say, version 2.0 of the Knight World army list over version 2.1, who is to say that 2.1 is more valid?

For Games Workshop's core games, Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the cycle of rules releases exists to justify new miniature releases and drive interest in the games. There is no requirement for each new version to be an improvement over the previous one, because that isn't the purpose of the new rules, or at least it hasn't been for a while. In contrast, the Epic army lists are being released because each new army list is supposed to represent an improvement over what went before.

The problem with this is it assumes that rules can continue to improve until they reach a definitive ideal form; the perfect army list, if you like. But this isn't achievable. While there are some rules that almost everyone can agree are just bad (imagine an army list with models immune to all attacks, that could move the length of the board had multiple auto-hit, auto-kill weapons and who cost 1 point each), as they get better it gets more subjective. Spend any time reading through rules discussions about any game on any forum and you will find that one players favourite rule is the one that ruins the whole army for everyone else.

When a company publishes an official army list, it halts the development process, at least for a while. It isn't saying that this army list is perfect, but it does say that this is as good as any and this is the version that will be used. Games Workshop abandoning Epic Armageddon has removed that part of the process and so development can continue, endlessly, with no end point and no final form.

So by finally abandoning Epic Armageddon, Games Workshop have actually extended the development process indefinitely.