@opttwoodrow That's where the "Mindless" aspect separates it.

All hobbyists have a form of shiny stuff syndrome with the things they like. Mindless aspect comes into play when your just buying stuff to buy it, not painting or even fully assembling it before moving on. I feel this is encouraged by games that have this "play it in an hour, pick it up, put it down move on" kind of aspect to their style.

Gotta say, I don't *want* one page style tabletop rulesets, give me the 150 page book with complex mechanics instead

I honestly believe its this constant push for hyper fast, one page front and back rules, no substance "gaming" that started us on the road to mindless miniature-binge buying just to play with the next thing, "I don't care about the story/lore" mentality.

Gotta say, I don't *want* one page style tabletop rulesets, give me the 150 page book with complex mechanics instead

1610 Klushino, Polish hussar - Anatoly Telenik

John Blanche

Boris Vallejo fantasyscape

Tiger Junkies

Art by • Daniel Porta

"The original book certainly combined a dystopic and violent universe with humour – perhaps the irony was rather heavy handed and maybe the humour verges on the silly in places – but I was writing a book about wargames for wargamers and not aiming for literary credibility. And just as well, you might reasonably say! My approach has always tended to combine high and low styles together. Sometimes that was to evoke a deliberate clash intended to remind us that this is all pretend and we should not take it too seriously. I probably couldn’t resist the gag. I did cheerfully plunder some quite serious literary references. If I read or saw something that "would work well in 40K" I used to just jot it down and it would be re-worked into the text.

I think that approach did colour the way other authors at GW presented the universe; especially in the hands of Mike Brunton and Graeme Davis because we shared a sense of humour (and often the odd pint or two at the Salutation after work). It was fun coming up with all the imperial mantras and nonsense sayings, and I think we were quite competitive about it, trying to make each other laugh whilst riffing on different ideas. We were quite an educated bunch. At a time when most people didn’t go to college we were all graduates – Phil Gallagher studied Russian at Cambridge – and both me and Graeme (and Nigel Stillman for that matter) had studied archaeology so we brought a lot of broad cultural and historical references into our worlds.

As 40K evolved, and other writers took over the job, it did get increasingly po-faced, which I always thought missed the point a bit – but what can you do?"

Interview with Rick Priestley (https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2020/11/interview-rick-priestley-part-ii.html?m=1)

So when the terminally online tourists, fan haters and posers tell you "iTs AlWaYs BeEn PoLiTiCaL"

Just remind them that the old boys made this game for shits, giggles, laughs, and just dumping random world experience into it, while making it as pointlessly fun as possible.

Wargames for Wargamers. :)

Doodling random alternative 4th Ed cover art

blockbuster

"A Portfolio of Robert E. Howard", Savage Sword of Conan #15, October 1976, art by Howard Chaykin, John Buscema, Tim Conrad, John Byrne, and Marie and John Severin