GregHowley.com

This blog is such an interesting look into my own shifting interests and hobbies. At any given time, I've got a single leisure item on which I focus. Over the years, that's been Lindy Hop, it's been web design, and it's been video games and board games. From mid-2014 until mid-2015, it was Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Starting in August 2015, I've developed a new hobby focus. The Privateer Press game WarMachine.

While I've played role-playing games and tabletop strategy board games, I've never really tried out tabletop wargaming. I think reading about the expense of stuff like Warhammer 40K put me off. But I've got three close friends who have been playing Warmachine for about 2 years, and I guess I just realized that A)Their interest isn't a passing fad, and B)Since we all tend to like the same things, if they like it that much, I probably would too.

Well, now I'm into it. And here's a brief primer on the game. Two armies face off, each of equal point values. The individual mans, termed models, each have a point value. Each army is led by a warcaster, who in chess terms is that army's king and queen put together. The warcaster is the most powerful piece, and killing him/her wins the other player the game. Besides warcasters, armies are composed of units (groups of models), solos (single models), and warjacks. The warjacks are big powerful robots with magical brains. Warcasters all have a pool of FOCUS, and each turn they can spend the focus to cast spells or allocate it to a warjack to make that jack run or charge, attack more accurately, hit harder, or attack more times.

It can get complex.

But it's a great game. And the flavor of the game's factions is also well done. I came in playing Cygnar, the default human faction. My friends play Cryx (undead pirates), Convergeance of Cyriss (magic cyborgs) and Mercenaries (largely dwarven mish-mash). The other factions are Khador (communist Russians), Protectorate of Menoth (religious zealots), and The Retribution of Scyrah (elves with force fields). My two-word synopses are of course oversimplifications. Each faction has their own strengths and weaknesses, and while they aren't necessarily one hundred percent balanced (Cryx is wicked OP), most factions have models that help to counter specific other factions.

I own a house now, and don't have a lot of extra money to sink into a hobby like this, so I've been doing things on the cheap. I sold my 20-year-old Dragon Dice on eBay and made nearly a hundred dollars, which I used to buy a starting army. I take comfort in the fact that when I eventually give up Warmachine, I can sell the models back and make back every penny of what I spent. Also, rather than buy a $70 case to hold the models, I built one from a cheap photo memento box and an old couch cushion that I found in the garage of my house when I moved in. It's got metal corners and a leather handle, and works so well that I may build a second.

I'm painting some of the models, something I've not done since I painted D&D miniatures in college. It's a nice thing to do for an hour in the evening while catching up on Agents of SHIELD or Homeland. I'm also beginning to build a table on which to play the game. It's really just two cheap 2' x 4' pieces of hardboard with stuff on it made out of corrugated cardboard, repurposed kids' toys, and old cereal boxes. But it's going to kick ass once I'm done - just you wait.

Yes, I'm a nerd.