Warhammer 40k… ever heard of it? I have too, but I had no idea on the specifics until Sunday. Kara and I went out for a nice dinner at The Keg in Factoria, and while leaving my eyes spotted a store sign across the parking lot “Games Workshop.” I thought the ‘Games’ might refer to European boardgames, so we drove over there and I went in. As soon as I came through the door I realized that this was a store that sold ONLY Warhammer 40k miniatures, books, etc. It was quite a weird experience to walk into a store and suddenly realize that they sell NOTHING you’re interested in. A friendly (and nerdy) employee came up to me and:
Him: “Do you collect?”
Me: “No, I’m more into European boardgames.”
Him: “Oh, um, like Settlers of Catan?”
Me: “Yeah, do you guys sell anything like that?”
Him: “No, we sell Warhammer 40k only; it’s like Settlers without the emphasis on resource collection”
I knew without any explanation of the game that it was nothing like Catan, but I never was able to understand how moving painted figures around on a mock landscape could be considered a game, so I decided to continue the conversation. He proceeded to walk me through a round of the game (Kara was sitting in the Jeep, so I checked to see if she was shooting me a “c’mon, let’s go” look… she was reading something, so I was good). First he showed me how you move your units around; they have a special measuring stick that shows how far units can move. Then the fighting begins, which consists of rolling an assload of dice. 3’s or higher on a d6 (six sided die) mean a successful shot was fired. Then you roll again to see how many ‘wounds’ were inflicted (again 3’s or higher). And THEN, the opponent rolls a number of dice equal to the number of wounds to see how many shots were saved by armor. That, my friends, is what we call a dice-fest and not a good time. After a few more details (which I’ll save you from) the store was closing so we had to wrap it up. It really couldn’t have worked out better, I got enough info to know that I wasn’t interested, but then I was able to leave without having to say “thanks, but that sounds boring.”
My CS roomate back at college was super into that damn game. He used to get off of work on a friday night, and then stay up all night playing this fast-paced war game. He bought a ton of the figures, and painted them himself, leaving them all over the dining room. The best/worst part was that he bought his own "molder" so he could mold tons of characters and not have to buy them. Gay, gay, Gay, gay. Nerd.