It's the title of my blog--stolen, lovingly, from the vibe-defining Dwarf Fortress tagline--and it's the attitude I endeavour to bring to wargaming. It's no secret that I'm a competitive person at heart, in many ways, and like to win. Everybody likes winning.
Warhammer provides a unique challenge to my competitive streak, as it is, in many ways, inherently at odds with my other game-related love, which is storytelling and creativity. The rules to Warhammer change every few months, with this-or-that weapon or unit coming to ascendancy, or languishing in the penalty box for sins committed five editions past. Magnetization can get you only so far: at some point in this hobby, you have to choose between building and painting something you like versus something that will win you the game.
The good news is that in Warhammer, winning is kind of... easy? I know that sounds oxymoronic, or maybe braggadocios, given that the game is usually played in a one-on-one competitive setting. To be clear, I don't mean to say, "oh, it's easy because I'm really good at it" (hint: I'm not).
No, Warhammer is easy because your army is as powerful as you want it to be. It's no great feat to go online, find a tournament-winning list and hit "add to cart" on the webstore. Your sprue-grey army will lead you to undisputed, crushing victory against your friends and loved ones for three months, before the rules change and you find yourself in the possession of a bunch of unloved plastic (and a much, much thinner wallet).
The problem is even worse in Warhammer: 30k. Any jerk can run a bunch of Contemptors and Scorpius tanks and win literally every game of Horus Heresy. How many dreadnoughts you shove into 2,500pts is a pretty direct, numerical indicator of how much you want to win.
Within certain bounds, the game tends to go to whichever player prioritized victory at the list-building stage of the game. Chasing victory in this hobby (outside of tournaments, which are not my jam, but I'm not going to yuck your yum) is expensive, time-consuming, and unsatisfying.
The good news is that this frees up my obsessive optimization-brain for something else: creativity! storytelling! experimental new painting techniques! Chasing these goals means accepting Losing into my heart as an inevitable. Not every game, of course, but a lot of them. More than half. Probably a lot more than half.
So, I'm dedicating this blog to (in addition to whatever else I feel like writing about on any given afternoon), these delightful, soul-affirming stepping stones to Losing at Warhammer (and related games).
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