Imperial Vox Cast

So, the podcast and the website has been taking up a lot of my time recently.  I have been making some new contacts and have been expanding our social networks.  Since I have never created anything like this I am feeling this out.  All in all I think things are going well.  Of course there have been some hiccups along the way and I really appreciate the support from our listeners and my fellow hosts.  What I really wanted to say is that I am really excited about our future, especially with the new contacts we have established. 

First and foremost I would like to mention our friends over at Dice Like Thunder.  Their support has helped us expand rapidly in the last few months.  Through our promo on their show and Tor’s Buttal/Rebuttal appearance we have drawn many new listeners.  Thank you Richard for taking a notice and helping us out.  We look forward to possible future collaborations and wish you guys continued success in this community that we both look to support.  

Next, I would like to say thank you to Phil from the War Banner and the Broken Forge.  Through his support, we have been able to broker a deal to give our listeners a huge discount on GW products.  Please check out the Broken Forge and enter the promo code VOX to receive an additional discount on GW products.  The discount listed on the banner is in addition to his already discounted prices, so this is the best price I have seen online.  Add that to his offer for free shipping on orders over $100 and you have an amazingly generous offer to gamers.  I would also like to say Thank you to Phil for his time, we have been sending messages back and forth and have talked for a spell about podcasting in general and how to further my efforts here.  His advice helped immensely.

Finally I would like to say I am excited by yet another relationship forming.  The Black Library has agreed to offer some books as prize support and some for the show to review.   We are huge fans of the fluff and are looking forward to being able to discuss some of their books on the show as well as being able to offer some books to you, our loyal listeners. 

We are excited to see what other relationships will evolve from here.  It has been great to be able to do so much as it is and we are looking forward to what the future has to come.  Again, none of this would be possible without you, our loyal listeners.  Thank you all for your support!  

So, for my standard gaming night this week, I took a detour from the norm.  For a change I strayed from 40k (don’t worry it was only a distraction).  I did this mainly because I wanted to go hang out with a friend that I haven’t taken time for in a while. He isn’t a Warhammer 40k player, so we decided to pull out our old Magic Cards.  

At first I felt a bit guilty, kinda like cheating on a girl.  On my normal night to play 40k, here I was playing something else.  After playing the first few hands, it was becoming more natural.  No, I am not switching over… I am simply not ruling out a night of MTG.  

It was a fun night with old friends.  Not just my friend who I hadn’t hung out with in a long time, but my old friend MTG, my first true experience with an addictive competitive game where you could build your own forces and put them into play.  I think I may venture to get my children into MTG when they are in Middle School and use that as an excuse to collect them a bit.  I also think it is a good branch into the world of gaming.  It is easy for a kid to carry a deck of cards with him and play with his friends.  It isn’t as easy for them to collect and paint a 40k army.  Thinking back, I remember those days as a kid, getting my first fix to an addictive society of gaming.  MTG was a good gateway drug for me.  

I guess the main thing is to not forget about those old hobbies.  Every now and then it can be good to blow the dust off of them and take them up for a night or two.  Hell, you spent all that money on it in the past, might as well enjoy it still.  Just don’t forget the true god of gaming, that 40k Army that takes up all your time and spare money.

Often my sister has called me “King of the Nerds”.  I earned this title through my ability to interact easily with both the gaming community and those in the general public.  I have achieved this through various means that I don’t know need be addressed.  The main means I did this is simple, I did NOT talk about my hobbies with those that I didn’t think would be into what I did.  This has continued to be a tactic I have used, not talking to those I work with about 40k or neglecting to pull out a codex at the family camp out (my immediate family knowing what I do, but my extended family does not, and definitely not to the extent that I have gone).  My wife recently called me out on this, “Why do you hide what you do?” 

Such a simple question, but the answer wasn’t easily obtained in my brain.  I have been doing this for so long that I don’t even notice my efforts to hide what I do from others.  The reason, or the main one I can think of is tied to that childhood fear of rejection and ridicule.   Being an overweight child all my life around these southern California tanned, fit, surfer kids has never been easy.  Add in my childhood attraction to comic books and video games and I was a prime target for the sporty, rich jocks that ran around the school thinking they were better than…well everyone else.  As any creature, those survival instincts kicked in eventually and, especially after moving onto a high school where only four people there knew me before, I reinvented myself in as “King of the Nerds”.  

I didn’t discuss gaming or comics with people.  I learned about popular culture and watched sports, hell I took up playing sports for a while.  I went to parties and concerts.  I must admit that this was restrictive for my growth as a gamer, but it allowed me to embed myself into the general public.  I am not saying I fully regret this, this time of my life helped me meet a great woman that I would eventually go on to marry and I have met some of my best friends during this time.  Luckily for me that one of those friends I met during this period of my life happened to play this obscure game call…Warhammer 40k!  Sometimes though, I look back and wonder, had I been more open with my hobbies, could I have fit in with others and still been able to enjoy my Nerd lifestyle?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Unfortunately there is no way to know.  I do think I missed out on some good gaming time and meeting others who enjoyed hobbies similar to mine. 

This mentality has followed me beyond, as I mentioned above.  I am not saying that I will go to work tonight and tell people that I host a podcast about this game called Warhammer 40,000 which involved miniatures that I paint and set on a table full of terrain that, I build and paint.  However, I did find myself telling a friend here at school about what I did when he saw me working my forums.  I am looking to ease myself out of the “closet” (go ahead Dawson, I will take the obvious jokes) and be able to tell people about what I do if it were to come up in a conversation.  

This transition I think is becoming far easier in todays society.  Lets face it, it seems to be far more popular to be a “Nerd”.  Video games are things that celebrities talk about, hell there is even a video game award show.  Comics have hit mainstream through blockbuster films and hero orientated TV shows.  Among these newly risen pop culture elements are a series of games by THQ.  The Dawn of War series, like them or not, has done a lot to advance our hobby into the world of pop culture and main stream.  After seeing my screen saver, a classmate asked me if I played Dawn of War.  Something obscure like Warhammer 40k a few years ago would never be recognized.  

On the horizon are several other things to bring our hobby up.  There is the Fabled and long off 40k MMO, perhaps it will emerge when people are finally over WoW, and the eventual Ultramarines Movie.  Two more weapons in the Arsenal of the “nerds” that play this game.  There may be a day when we have nothing to fear from those that mock and ridicule us.  I think it will help anyway.  As an adult, I realize that there is far less to fear, most grown adults don’t bully each other, but for those teens that are getting into this hobby, I hope that this slow rise of 40k into the pop culture realm will aid those children and keep them from needing to hide their hobby and not have to create an alter ego.

After a recent talk with Dawson, my mind was sent wondering about what exactly draws us to a new army.  After DJ got a chance to read the Space Wolf Codex, he tells me that he believes that he has “found what he was looking for” and feels that he no longer wants Orks.  Space Wolves will most likely be his new army and that will fulfill his current unease about any of his given armies.  So, what is it that draws us towards an new army?

The first I will talk about is what Dawson has been going through, that desire for something that your army just doesn’t seem to be able to handle.  For Dawson’s example, he wants a heavy hitting, preferably close combat orientated army.  With this he has always been drawn to the more elite forces.  His Deathwing fit one of these, but in his oppinion wasn’t overly good at the Assault criteria.  Yes, these forces would dominate many in assault, but there were plenty of other units that were cheaper that could do similar levels of damage and thus be able to take out his small elite army.  When he realized that his army couldn’t quite fulfill his desires, he started looking for something else.  He bought Necrons, perhaps this shooty army would fulfill this.  When finding this army, Dawson feels liek he found his match (we will see once he has played a few rounds with them).  

Similar is that opposite effect.  I started out with Imperial Guard, a highly shooty army.   After playing with them for a while, I decided I wanted to go for something totally different.  I wanted and assaulty army.  This brought me to my Chaos Army.  My Yin and Yang if you will.  I have two armies that cover complete opposite ends of the spectrum and this, along with lack of funds, has kept me satisfied with the forces that I currently command.  I think many gamers fall into this area.  

 Finally, I will attribute this to that shiny, magpie mentality. Many people rush out to grab the new and “most powerful” army.  They see all the shiny models and the new abilities offered and “have to have it”.  Obviously everyone is drawn on some level to the new army that is out.  Most of us would admit some interest in the Ork Codex when it came out and, I must say, the Space Wolves look good (thought rather similar to Chaos and will not be able to snare me, at least not yet).  

So, this isn’t really a problem.  Well, not for GW and all in all, not for the hobby.  The more models that are sold, the better off the company is doing and thus, the more they will be able to spend on the game in general.  For us gamers, I would say it is dangerous if you allow yourself to crave every army.  I hear stories of people who play five or more armies.  If they are able to balance this, more power to them.  In my opinion, if you spread yourself out too thin with armies, you will be unable to master any one force.  If your simply collecting 40k models for the sake of having them and play only for fun with friends, there is obviously nothing wrong with this.  If you are trying to be a competitive gamer, I can see a potential problem.  It is my belief that one must play many, many games before become proficient with an army, let alone master it.  If you have too many armies, you are neglecting the practice and the games that you need to do in order to truly know your army.  As Silas Said in our Broadcast X, he has been playing his Dark Eldar for 5+ months and still feels that he is far from mastering it and he plays multiple games a week.  

I urge players out there to try and stick with an army or two.  I can understand not wanting to stick with only one as sometimes this can cause one to succumb to boredom of the repetition, but don’t let yourself get carried away.  When you get a new army, spend several months of playing that army exclusively.  Allow yourself to truly know your army in and out.  Choose a build and play that build with very little changes to that build for months until you have determined the strengths, weakness, and ticks that your build and army as a whole can perform.  Allow yourself to become an expert, at least in the build of your army you are fielding.