Today feels like a good time for a little reflection; I’ve been having a little bit of trouble getting back into painting, but more specifically getting back to the joyful, fun part of painting. The last time I think I was feeling like this on the Warhammer 40K front was when Games Workshop was after issuing takedowns on a lot of community fan animations and projects and I felt like the company, as the people holding the game’s reins, made a serious mis-step with the community that has supported them for decades and that they crossed a serious line. My lukewarm take at the time was equal parts critical and cringe and I wanted to try and take a more measured and thought-out examination of where I think Warhammer is right now. Among my local friends I’ve become in no small part the local “Warhammer guy,” but it’s hard to be that guy when the enthusiasm and joy I feel for the hobby is absent.

I’ve been having a difficult time getting into Warhammer 40K’s 11th edition. One part of that has been the pressure of real-life commitments, another part of that has been having an army that didn’t feel viable or like it could meet the present conditions of the local meta, and yet another part of that has been wheels spinning in my head since the Armageddon box launch but also since the announcement of the Space Marine codex. In the background I’d been planning an army (totally not Space Marines) for a while now and the news of the sheer number of units either moved to Legends or becoming Legendary Proxies didn’t sit well with me and I’m not entirely sure I had an explanation why. Granted, I wasn’t the only one salty that some Firstborn units I had already picked up were being retired before they would have the chance to shine on the tabletop, but it felt like something a little bigger had shifted in the Warhammer dialectic. Midwinter Minis actually did a video recently that I think resonates and lines up with some of my own thoughts on the matter:

The writing had been on the wall for Firstborn since 8th edition when Primaris marines were introduced, and since the introduction of “Legends” as a concept. Something about Legends as a concept, where there would still be rules so the models could be used in casual play but where they would frowned upon in a tournament setting, opened a Pandora’s Box for this game that I worry will only continue to accelerate and ramp up the circulation of unit that are legal in the game in the long term. I used to play a lot of TCGs in my youth, and largely moved away from those in a competitive or large-scale social scene as I got older because I found that the breakneck pace of expansions and “legal” cards made it impossible to keep up with.

I think there was an idea with Legends when it launched that it would really only be for niche or inaccessible models so that no one was showing up and winning a tournament because of a 20 year-old model that no one could get their hands on anymore. The ones that comes to mind for me, and the only ones I ever got slapped with were before, was the Eldar Bonesinger and some combinations of Autarch that were overly complicated or impractical at the time, though when Autarch’s datasheets changed over on 10th that become kind of a moot point anyways and you could still field your Autarchs. The Legends door being opened up though meant that there was always a scenario, like old Eldar Corsairs models pre-plastic revamp and a lot of Forgeworld stuff, where a big swath of a range could just be axed. To Games Workshop’s credit, after Legends was introduced and there were truescale Primaris marines available, Firstborn broadly stuck around longer than I think I originally anticipated, but three editions later and the hammer I think we all suspected was coming has finally dropped.

One of my favorite reactions to this so far was from Paul is bad at stuff who made known his personal anguish over losing his beloved Centurion list, and while his reaction is both hyperbolic and tragically hilarious, I think it speaks to a frustration that has been simmering since the Legends box was cracked open to begin with. Warhammer has always been a very slow-burn hobby, where it can take months, if not years, if not a decade for a project – whether that project is a specific model, squad, vehicle, Titan, or full-blown army – to bloom. You went into this knowing it was going to take longer and that the painting, studying, and playing were all going to take a long time to complete, but when you had added a tool to your army’s disposal that was a tool that, under most circumstances, was always going to be useable in some regard even if the role of that tool changed between editions or evolved over time.

Nothing lasts forever; humans build things, and over time without mind and maintenance those things fade into memory. That isn’t a rule imposed by Games Workshop, that’s just life. Everything, whether the squad of tactical marines sitting on my desk for the last year alongside my Phobos marines, eventually loses its meaning over time and is reclaimed by this amazing, wonderful world of sunlight and stardust that we inhabit. The things that stay over time are the things that we decide speak to us and still have meaning to us, and so we put in the thought and the work and the time to keep those things alive. The removal of Firstborn marines, and the en masse removal of old Firstborn vehicles, dreadnoughts and flyers, however, does not feel like a natural over-time evolution of the game or how it is played by the community that loves it, rather an imposed decision to steer away from venerable kits. This was not a foregone or unavoidable direction for Firstborn, either; the evolution of units like the Scouts and the Armageddon box’s recent Land Speeder shows that new life can easily be breathed into kits and frames that are showing their years without taking them out of the hands of the people who have put thought, effort, and years into the hobby.

One of my favorite books to go back and leaf through is an old Games Workshop Christmas catalogue from 2004. Warhammer was a simpler game, then, when the biggest thing you could field was a Rhino-sized tank or a Dreadnought. It is a nostalgic “golden age” of the game that I have a skewed picture of, a deceptive image of a simple time that I have fallen for, and I know that there is always more to mythological golden ages than the picture on the surface. All the same, I think I think there is a great deal that modern Warhammer has done well, and even with 11th edition itself, between giving players much better app support and making barriers to entry for new players far lower. Some of the highlights in my opinion are on reducing codex costs and including paints with combat patrols, and making sure there is a wealth of online resources available to new hobbyists.

I think the idea that Warhammer is a game that more can start now and enjoy and create new meaning for themselves in is a very commendable change. I think the game, however, is also going through an identity crisis from being equal parts satirically tongue-in-cheek and immersive grimdark into something that, another few editions from now, we might stop to recognize as Games Workshops seeks to satisfy shareholders and transform the IP into something more marketable and mainstream. New players get to experience an incredible, expansive new universe that has become accessible and where the barriers to entry are perhaps fewer than ever before. When you have been in the hobby a while, though, especially now with the Pandora’s Box open now that is Legends, you see that something in the promise of Warhammer has shifted. Models that we ascribed meaning and story and sentiment to are now being left behind, and even if we pony up the cost of new kits we are left to wonder if we have just picked up the next Hammerfall Bunker or Suppressors, with a shelf life less than three editions long.

Despite some steps in the right direction, and some exaggerative marketing, “Warhammer” is not in fact “For Everyone.” Warhammer is for Everyone who continues to pay to ride the FOMO roller coaster, and the up-front perceived inclusivity of the new models and kits comes at a hidden cost of the broken promise of a reliable game you start, take your time with, build your own way, and come back home to. The up front cost is reduced, but the cost of having to potentially replace models over a shorter shelf life, added to the cost of cardboard terrain packs and having a purchase or print a whole new set of WTC-compliant terrain to play “legit” games at the FLGS exceed that reduced price to first get your foot in the door. The Warhammer community itself remains one of the most including and positive community spaces in my real-life and online alike, and the world remains one that has a great deal of meaning to me, but my confidence in Games Workshop is like the lukewarm resignation of watching an arms-length friend or family member make impulsive choices that make things more difficult for themselves and for others in the long run instead of understanding who they are and what they bring to the world.

Where does this leave me and my plans to make a new army for 2027? Well, conflicted. I got my hands on some second-hand Phobos models, including the Infiltrators I painted last year. I plan to work on some Reivers, including repainting my old squad of test models now that I have a little bit more experience. At this point whether the army gets to 1000 points or not depends on how “elite” Space Marines will be after the new Codex drops, at least in terms of playing local games at the local store. I think my stance is going to be doubling down in casual play, though, and continuing to paint my way or play my way wherever possible. So long as somebody’s okay with me bringing Firstborn as “Legendary Proxies” (what a pretentious title) or playing a little bit of Calvin-ball with the rules. I think the days where I could show up to an event even resembling competitive, though, have come and gone now. As long as Warhammer remains a tournament game of elites with an ever-expanding maintenance and storage cost, I think I might be in the sunset of my days as the local “Warhammer Guy.”

As happy as I will always be for the worlds I’ve created and the sandbox I’ve participated in (and just as my 9th edition Crusade game with @brittneystucklessart will never die), I think the only models in my future from here are going to be old unloved Firstborns as fuel for local painting workshops. I’ll buy the three-year-cycle codexes for the sake of play and because I think the new format is a good idea, and I’ll probably even support the app because I think it’s gotten a lot better as a resource, but I can’t justify the cost of anything plastic with a Games Workshop sticker on it when the promise of playing the long game has finally, and on a broader scale, been broken.

Last, and on a more positive note, I have a couple shout-outs to a project in the wider community, though, that capture something that I think has a shine to it and a worth that Games Workshop plastic has recently lost for me. Crusade House has a channel where they periodically post alternate play ideas for narrative Warhammer, like a survival-horror playstyle that would be great for the coming Spooky Month. Because I am also always in pursuit of miniature-agnostic games to keep pushing my Little Dudes across the tabletop, I also feel like a project really worth shouting out as a skirmish game concept is Snarling Badger Studios’ Repent Ye Foolish Gods. While it’s intended to take on a more medieval styling, me and @kinpatsusamurai will likely be taking up a Warhammer reskin of this in the new year once we finish our run of Majestic 13. Snarling Badger’s games are always a good time and this one promises to be a great way to stick it to the Chaos gods. And speaking of Kinpatsusamurai, he has also started a blog to cover a series of his solo battle reports, based in DC’s Gotham City, over at https://thebatrep.blogspot.com. Go show him some love!

Lastly, a shout-out for my own project – did another painting workshop with my co-host Brandon at the Sandbox Gaming carnival event at the local Easter Seals building and got to test-drive 11th edition – and as a game mode, I think it’s got a lot of promise. Still to come are more of the painting tutorials I’ve been doing across the island at events like Atlanti-Con and Avalon Expo, and I will also (dead Eldar gods willing) be taking up Boltgun again at the Sandbox Gaming marathon this coming winter in support of local charities. Lots of work to be done in real-life and on the hobby desk both, and the only way out is through, but – unlike Games Workshop, seemingly – I do intend to keep the promise of playing the long game.