Prelude to War

I am absolutely determined to play Kings of War.

As a former Warhammer player I was royally pissed when I learned that Games Workshop had killed the game last year. I understand it was a business decision, and the company exists primarily to make money. But in turn they have to understand that as a loyal player from my high school years, as a person who has 5-6 armies and as a person who supported and frequented the tournament scene in Australia I had every right to be mad. I'm never going to buy wholesale into another GW system again the way I did for Fantasy. This is not to say I won't buy paints, peripherals, perhaps a stand alone board game, or even the occasional miniature that catches my eye. I love Total War: Warhammer, and I still have a lot of fondness for the IP for both the fantasy and sci-fi versions. It's just time to move on from the company that dominated my childhood years. There are lots of miniature gaming companies out there, and it's time to broaden my horizons.

Warhammer 6th edition. I entered the hobby during the HeroHammer phase of 4th edition, and began playing in tournaments during 5th and 6th editions. I stopped playing around 2003, and completely missed the advent of the 7th and 8th editions.

To be fair it could be said that I'd already checked out of the hobby. I stopped playing around 2003 when I moved to Japan for a number of reasons, the chief being that my Japanese was not good enough to search for the isolated pockets of GW players that I now know exist within the Land of the Rising Sun. GW officially killed Warhammer in 2016 with the release of the Age of Sigmar, 13 years after my last game on the tabletop. What stake do I still have in this, given that I hadn't played for years and spent nary a dime supporting the system in over a decade?

To be honest, I don't know. But I do remember having a really visceral reaction on learning that Warhammer had been discontinued by Games Workshop. It was like someone closing the book on your childhood. Or one of your childhood idols dying. 2016 was a terrible year for my generation, losing Carrie Fischer, Muhammad Ali and David Bowie among others. It seems fitting that Warhammer, another larger than life icon of my youth, also died that year.

There are a few replacements out there for disenchanted Warhammer players. You could always keep playing the 8th edition, and pretend that the apocalypse never happened. There's the 9th Age, a community-built website sporting a free rules set and army lists. For me, however, I have decided to run with Kings of War, which is now currently in its second edition. I chose Kings of War because of its inclusive aspect - you are free to use any miniatures from any range in your games, even in tournaments, as long as your miniatures are a reasonable depiction of the unit. That keeps my current Warhammer collection relevant, and even opens up new possibilities for mixing, matching, converting and playing. I also like that all their army lists are contained in two books, which is in stark contrast to the rapacious model used by GW over the years which required you to buy rulebooks, supplements and separate army books on a 2-4 year cycle. The funny thing is that this consumer model never bothered me when I was invested in the game. It took the destruction of the game to make me join the ranks of salty ex-GW players.

Having decided to go with Kings of War the next step was to find players. This is the hard part, because I currently reside in Japan. When I look at the WargamerAU website I can see familiar names have made the leap, and it makes me happy to see the fantasy scene thriving back home, albeit under a new system. It's a little bit trickier over here, especially with the language barrier, but nowadays my Japanese has improved to the point where I can follow and get my point across rules wise. I've been on a mission to find Mantic players, and I've stumbled onto a group of ex-Warhammer players who have transitioned into the Age of Sigmar. With a bit of luck I can lure a few of them over back to rank and file game play. They will next meet on June 4, and hopefully I'll be able to tee up a couple of games on this date.

I have three armies in Japan - an old school Empire army, dating back almost two decades, a High Elf army from the same period, and a Tomb Kings army composed of latter day GW battalion boxes. My side hobby will be to complete these armies. My Empire army was my main tournament army back at the turn of the century. I only have to finish a regiment of Ulric Templars to complete it.

The High Elves I have owned for a long time, but have never painted them. I may have played a couple of games with them, but never at a tournament, and I'm determined to get them on the table if possible. I took them over from Australia when I first came to Japan. I thought I would only be staying for a year and brought them over because being a stranger in a strange land I though I would have ample time to complete them. It didn't pan out that way - what does? - but now they are in various stages of completion, having been worked on every now and then in the intervening years.

The Tomb Kings I acquired completely in Japan. I bought them when I first came over, when Warhammer still had a solid grip on my psyche. Japan offered a ton of distractions and this, too, fell by the wayside, but not before I had bought enough models to field a third army in Japan. They too, are in various states of completion, but are mostly unfinished. Tournament rules in Australia mandated a minimum of three colours to qualify a model as painted, and under this criteria my High Elves are OK, but the Tomb Kings are ineligible. Another factor in my quest is that I've never played a game with my Tomb Kings. I want to get them on the table at least once.

My new fantasy rank and file game.

I'm not sure what reignited the passion for miniatures. I do know that this year I have been looking for gaming clubs, and I have pulled out these old models, ranked them up on my kitchen table, and begun working on them once again. Perhaps it was the acquisition of the second edition of Mansions of Madness, which required me to paint the mediocre Lovecraftian model contained within. Perhaps it was the influence of Gareth, a Welsh co-worker, who still has a passion for historicals that subtly influenced my thinking. Perhaps it was accidentally stumbling on to a 28 mm website and seeing a bunch of amazing miniatures that rekindled the flame. I don't know. 

For now, however, the goal is to do what I can with the three armies I have in Japan, and bring all of them to the next meeting on June 4. For better or worse, I am going to play a game of Kings of War, damn it, even if I have to drag some hapless Japanese dude to the table and give him one of my armies to play. I want to get rid of this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that all the time spent on these little toy soldiers was for nothing.