I was awake in the early hours a few nights ago mulling over a memory that has always stuck with me and thinking about whether table top gaming will ever produce another, such memorable event.
The event I'm referring to was a small, impromptu tournament I took part in between my brothers, a friend of ours, his cousin, me and another person, who I can't recall (maybe it was just between 5 of us?). I was about 13 or 14 at the time and we were playing 2nd edition Warhammer 40k.
The reason I remember it so fondly is because we managed to fit in a round-robin tournament in an afternoon, we all kept the same forces between each game, no-one had any "beardy" armies (that I remember, anyway) and every game was fun! I borrowed some orks from our mate and I absolutely loved my small band of space orks, led by a mega-armoured boss and his squad of mega-armoured nobz.
I'm not sure if I won a single game, but the action and gameplay was so memorable it still stands as my fondest memory of table top gaming, which I've tried to replicate since with almost no success. Why is this?! We've had small, "fun" tournaments since but with later additions of Warhammer 40k and there was never that sense of meaningfulness or fun gameplay. It always seemed a bit dry and mathematical, with players getting annoyed at other peoples forces and accusations of armies being too good or under-powered.
Maybe the problem is that we were all older and couldn't help but design armies that we designed to win, and adults brains work differently to kids brains, so a lot of the magic I remember could be because I was young and naïve.
I have had some great table top gaming experiences since. When my friends and I got hooked on playing 1000 point Warhammer Fantasy armies, we had great joy in the development of our heroes names and stories, and their small bands. I had a Dwarf hero by the name of Skalf Greybeard and his Grudgebearers; a friend of mine had a Imperial force under the command of the enigmatic Lucius von Brunhof (probably spelt that wrong...). We had rules over the army composition, so no-one could really make an all-dominating force. They were great games. But even they got dry eventually.
Maybe it was our unquestioning desire to play the "current" ruleset which killed the fun. Later editions of 40k and fantasy didn't seem to really help to re-invigorate our passion for the game and probably only helped to confuse some of us.
Well, that was what kept me up the other night, all these thoughts.
Maybe we should just play 2nd edition 40k again?
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