Shit I Love: Warhammer 40K

It's no secret that I'm into some seriously geeky stuff.

And I'm not one of these guys who would say "Oh dude I totally used to play Dungeons and Dragons and I played a Half-Elf", boldly squeezing yet another color onto the palette of irony, blobbed right next to "Elk-sweatshirt" and "Handlebar mustache".

That shit is weak to me, and earns you no points. If you weren't rolling dice until you were at least 25 years old, LARP'ed by the time you were 15, or know that there was in fact a Riddler "Super Powers" figure (merely a repainted Green Lantern) produced in Argentina only, under the brand name "Super Amigos", naturally, then there comes a point in the conversation where you are simply not following me, a point where no amount of head-nodding can convince me you have any idea what I'm talking about, nor do I make any sense to a normal person.

Like when I talk about buying a reissue of a "Land Of The Giants" trash-can from 1969, to go along with my vintage "Planet Of The Apes" trash-can I got off Ebay, because, obviously, one old science fiction trash-can manufactured for a child isn't enough. I need two.

But I digress, and I'd like to point out that I am trying not to be an elitist about this, I have just grown increasingly frustrated with the recent swing in popularity toward "geek-stuff", simply because these days wearing elf-ears is getting dangerously close to having a Bro-hawk six years ago. But if you got into all this crazy obscure geekery at 36 years old, more power to you. I need people to blow up with my Orks anyway...

Which brings us to-

Warhammer 40K.

I remember playing my first game of Warhammer 40K as a smaller scale version of it called EPIC 40K, with my friend D.J. up in Glen Ridge, NJ where he lived. It was great. It was fun. I knew shit about painting minis (short for miniatures or "little metal men" as my Mom would call them, as in "You've got these fucking little metal men all over the house") so my Eldar Reaver Titan didn't look very good, and in fact was painted with Testor's Enamels (the "kiss of death" for mini's, purchased at fine stores such as K-Mart) and looked like I had dipped my Eldar War Host into full bottles of my Mom's nail-polish (they were still sticky as we were playing and I had finished them WEEKS before the battle). D.J's minis always looks great, and he had a full army of Orks.

But I had a great time, despite the fact that I lost.
I lost a lot.
In fact I don't think I ever beat DJ and we played al the time, but winning isn't everything (see VMA's 2005) and the game was more about collecting, painting, converting, and having a blast.

When we upgraded to good old 40K (was it still Rogue Trader at this point?) I changed armies, now opting for the Imperial Guard. I gravitated toward this army because they were literally normal guys, just simple army guys with lousy laser rifles. And they died like normal guys, ALL THE TIME. But I just loved the idea of a scrub with a Lasrifle going up against a Greater Demon Of Nurgle- kind of like The Dirty Dozen vs The Balrog.

Then came a brief interlude with teenage drinking (not recommended), and a short attempt at "being cool".

That didn't last at all so the next army I got into was Orks.

Orks in 40K are great because they are basically like the Orcs we have come to know in fantasy literature, but the are in space. So they're Space Orks...and to me that's pretty fucking cool. And they are also great for guys like me that aren't amazing painters, because they basically covered in garbage, shooting garbage at you, and driving around in garbage. And they don't require much strategy, which I am obviously horrible with, you just run in and start shooting.

So I haven't actually played much since I was a kid but I still follow it, occasionally grab some minis from the local Games Workshop and entertain the idea of eventually playing. During the making of Black Parade I actually convinced Ray Toro to get into it. He got Space Wolves, the only kind of Space Marines I actually dig. Oh and I just remembered we actually got Patrick Stump into it...Necrons...that was great...it's lure knew no bounds.

I'm currently into The Death Korps of Krieg, and Vostroyans, both Imperial Guard armies, and as always Orks (especially those new plastic kits and the awesome Forgeworld stuff), though I occasionally miss the Eldar, and think about starting up some of those as well. I also briefly flirted with Tau, because Fire Warriors are some of my favorite models.

So that's some shit I love.

G

***forgot to mention, me and Mikey played some wicked f-ing games of Necromunda***