Friday, July 07, 2006

Love is plastic army men

I took crush to a games shop. The type of shop where the sell thousands of small plastic army men (or miniatures) for the playing of games such as Warhammer 40,000 - The Game of Futuristic Battles. The type of shop that is a true test of love. She passed the test*.


Although she the fact you can buy a rather small container of gravel for $13.50 astounded her ...
Crush: "Why would you just not use real gravel?".
TT: "It's not to scale".
Crush Boggles
I don't even play these games.**

I just like games. In general. For a little while I was officially researching games, which rates as the greatest scam I've ever run.

There is a definite link between code, games, and fantasy. One of the best explanations I've found is: Word and code, code as world.
This paper examines imaginary worlds – complex but logical-and-controllable systems. The paper analyzes the overlap between structural characteristics of different sorts of imaginary worlds, as they are constituted in (fantasy) literature, role-playing games and computer code.

* By pass I mean: she's still talking to me.
** Ok, I have played these games. But never collected the army men. Was always impressed by the license to print money, though. Idea is you have a game that requires the outlay of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to buy the little figures. And then you release updates and new rules every month ... incredible.


17 comments:

elaine said...

Someone gave me a set of Necromunda figurines once. I think in the hope that we could play together.

I painted the figurines which I quite liked but didn't like the game.

Mind you, the person who gave me said figurines also fielded an army of purely goblins in a Warhammer tournament. Because it would be fun to see how it went with no orcs.

_nothing_ said...

Oh Dear!
Elaine Elaine. You are a total geek.

I must admit I always thought the game was actually quite boring ... all that measuring and arguments about obscure rules. You have to be half lawyer to really get the most out of it.

elaine said...

I did tell you I was. I don't think I could have got to postgrad physics if it weren't so.

I think I sometimes manage to hide it.

mskp said...

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR...

and very tiny bits of gravel.



ah, those crazy war magicians...

richardwatts said...

Never been a wargaming person either, tobytoby, so I totally understand where you're coming from - especially have seen whole rooms full of rules-lawyers angrily waving tape measures and bickering at Arcanacon several years in a row.

Now, role-playing games, on the other hand, as you know, are one of my great not-so-secret pleasures.

Should we try and test crush's boundaries/devotion to you by getting together for an afternoon of percentile dice rolling, the crossing off of hit points, and communal storytelling? Bags me being the GM!

Anonymous said...

Surely you could steal some gravel from the side of the road, and beat it until it submitted to your required scale?

Bonnie Conquest said...

FUCKING GEEKS!
I HATE WAR GAMING! WHAT IS WITH THAT! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

richardwatts said...

*passes bonnie a relaxing drink and offers her a comfortable chaise-lounge*

Unknown said...

I collected these for about 6 months in year nine.

I collected orks. I could never paint them as well as they did in the pictures so I gave up.

Although, I did always enjoy laughing at the grown men who worked at the shops.

Anonymous said...

are the figurines to the right scale to stick up some wargame geek fuckwads arse ??? stop the madness ..... and take crush somewhere that is NOT going to contribute to her eventual list of reasons for leaving you. ok ?

Bonnie Conquest said...

harsh and true, anon.

mskp said...

i think bonnie and her mate anonymous need a bex and a good lie down...

Bonnie Conquest said...

clearly you have moved to the dark side, kp.

_nothing_ said...

Dave: I lack many of the fine motor skills so the painting would never be much good.

Jeez, Anon, harsh much? Everyone needs a hobby. And Crush loves games so it was actually not that weird a choice to go a game shop ... it just happened to have a special upstairs area with plastic army men.

mskp said...

crush loves BOARD games.

_nothing_ said...

Surely a table with to-scale gravel and trees counts as a board.

And downstairs they have board games in the more traditional sense.

Anonymous said...

anon is within her rights, she is quite close with god and he reckons if ya gonna have a war maim, kill or rape innocent (real) people.......... in his name of course.