Iron Agenda

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Twists of fate...

 Isn't it funny some time how fate just deals you a hand that you totally don't expect? When I got off work, got home, did my few piddly little chores around the house, and sat down to add my daily blog I remembered - its Thursday. Thursday for most people probably probably means "Oh, I have my night of <insert random syndicated comedy/reality t.v./drama/ chick show here>! Yay!". But for me Thursday night is Game Night. Not 40K Night (The former name to Warmachine Night) but the night when I get together with a couple buddies and we play board games. Sometime we play Malifaux, or a game called Warlord (which I have recently informed them that I will be abstaining from as I just do not like the rules - note this as it comes into play later). Lo abd behold, having just brought my mini's and book just to show the game to them. Let that be a lesson to ya. Never leave home without your little metal/plastic men!

My Styrofoam box o' doom

After a few rounds of Betrayal at House on the Hill and Guillotine my friend Micah says "Hey, lets see how to play this Warmachine you have been telling us about.". So here I am rule book all done up like so:

OCD much?!?!?!?
No I am not in college, but I sure did feel like it after doing this all up.

So, here I am new guy - only a few games under my belt and ALMOST finished reading the rules....Once....and I now have to teach a game! I wish I had take my camera for pics of the match but it summed up to my friend Micah was Khador, and William was Cygnar. No terrain, just smash em up. It all boiled donw to William rolled exceptionally well and Micah couldn't roll above a 4 to save his life... So around 10 we called it as we all have work in the morning. William would like to try it again (winner syndrome) and Micah proceeded to bash the game in every way possible.

Pop quiz hot shots. Remember the part I said remember? Well, Warlord is the ONLY game that Micah has played of any sort of table top miniature game. And he has helped play test both its 1st and second edition...and he wrote the fluff for the first edition books...AND he has published novels based on this game. So yeah, he's a little biased and defensive about it. Well, when I said I didn't want to play Warlord anymore of course they asked why so I told them why in a very clinical methodical fashion told them the MANY reasons why I as an individual did not enjoy the rule system/game.

Why I bring this up was that he couldn't come up with a single RULE reason for him to nitpick it was all apples to oranges kind of stuff. "Well in Warlord you can do this and in this game you can't.". "It makes no sence for a model to just sit there and get crushed (Warlord has a thing called defensive strikes). This is so unrealistic."

So in closing do you know what my reply was?

"What is realistic about either Giant Robots running around smashing each other powered by steam and a David Copperfield guy? What is so realistic about in Warlord some vampire guy on an undead horse goes up and attacks a dwarf riding a bear? Nothing is realistic about ANY of it. Its escapism...THATS why I play games. Not realism."

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