Saturday 3 December 2011

G(r)eek Rage!

Games Workshop! True Line of Sight is demeaning:

An innocent gamer is made to look like a fool thanks to a powerful allience of Greek Media and GW's stupid rules...

I found this little gem over at Tiny Legions whilst I was looking for something else entirely. The story appears to be that a greek journalist attended a warhammer 40k tournament, interviewed some players, and came away with ...an opinion. The article was in greek, but fortunately, Antipope (the chap in the picture) has translated the thing into english (and passed comment in the article in general) on his blog, allowing as all to chuckle at some of the assertions coming out.

The Nazi, xenophibic, racist trope didn't really capture my attention that much, but this line did:

Painting the "armies" is a form of art on it's own accord, to which modelers dedicated hours or even days.

...hours or even days?

Try years, lady. Years.

Anyway, another decoy post to cover my OCD with my latest painting project. Next post will genuinely, honestly, really, really be a picture of something I've painted.

Honest.

6 comments:

  1. There is a point to be made about fascism and 40k, but to my mind that point is that a game that had a satirical setting in which you played Space Nazis was cleaned up for kids. Weirdly, this cleaning up ramped up the facist aesthetic and lost the satire.

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  2. That's a good point you raise there, DrBargle. That same humour drain that has taken place in the warhammer fantasy world has been even worse in the 40k world. Its just more hopeless, more helpless, more one sided than ever before. Its all just killy-killy-death-murder-chop, with skulls everywhere, which makes it harder and harder to relate to. Someone was trying to explain to me why the necrons weren't space undead. They were so serious that they couldn't see that:

    a.) I didn't care what their actual story was
    b.) I was trying to wind him up

    What really grates me about it is that none of the addition to the story line has helped to make the game better. Despide all the 'fluff' based armies I see around, the players don't care if they're playing with 'Bar Kinmad the Thrice-Damned' coming to avenge the death of his family (narrative) or a kitchen sponge with killing blow. As long as it gets the job done.

    Such a pity...

    As you say, Blue, some good points in the article. And, of course, lets not forget how demeaning TLoS is. Poor guy.

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  3. Yeah, DrBargle aptly sums up the causes of my lack of interest in 40K past 2nd edition... and the reasons I lobbied for 3rd edition Warhammer when we decided to give fantasy a try.

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  4. I have to wonder what this 'journalist' would come up with if she went to a Flames of War tournament and was faced with players fielding the armies of Nazi Germany....

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  5. @knobgobbler: Oops, didn't see you'd posted, sorry the lack of response :) - certainly you're right. Most old fantasy players will happily play rogue trader or even 2nd, but find the same problems going past it. I have got the RT book, with the notion that one day I'll buy some figures for that, but the lead pile is too large at the moment, and I'm struggling to find interested players, as it goes.

    @Chris - no doubt FOW players are respected, as their game has some historical value, where people can learn through the medium of play. It's just those sinister, outcast fantasy players (you know, we all listen to death metal, pirate software, live off the dole and only come out at night...) that are harbouring these dark thoughts.

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