I played in the Warhammer Fantasy tournament at the Rice University OwlCon game convention this past weekend. The three games I played were the first games of Warhammer I have played since I returned to Houston in 2005, and it had been about 6 months or some since I had played in Dallas. I was a bit rusty, and the version change did not help any, but I think things went fine anyway.
I ended the day with one win and to losses. My win was helped by a scenario that was more friendly to my Chaos Beastmen army than his Dwarf army, but I did have a strong run of good dice rolling. The best thing was that I was able to make two snake eye saving throws to keep key units in the battle. The other two games were no where near as good. The second game was against the player who went on to win the whole thing and the third game was against the player who game in 6th or 7th (I came in 7th from the bottom).
The games aside, and all three were good, I think I learned a bit about why I stopped playing Warhammer. Warhammer Fantasy is a great game. It is almost always fun to play, but it has the ability to be exceedingly competitive. This competitive side of the game means that armies can be created without any interest in what is fun…only what is likely to destroy others opponents, or get the best mix of comp + battle points at a tournament.
About a year before I moved to Dallas the Houston Warhammer group (based around a Yahoo group and now known as the HAWGs) decided that it would be a good idea to start organizing more local tournaments and also host an Indy GT tournament. I realized yesterday that this is what killed my interest in Warhammer. The games I played after that time were tournament armies, geared to win in that setting. The fun of the armies, and the playing just for fun started to disappear. Now like I said, the game is still fun, and I mostly enjoy playing these tournament games, but I really miss the just for fun games. I can remember sitting in the room at Rice having our first meeting about planning an Indy GT, and I really think that something changed after that meeting with how we were playing the game.
I also thought about the fact that the first three years I played Warhammer I only played my Lizardmen, and the army I played very rarely changed from week to week. After I got a better job, and had more money, I started buying other armies. I think I had six at one point. I am definitely not the best Warhammer player, and the decision to branch out into so many armies really hurt my ability to play any of the armies well. Right now I have three playable armies in my possession: Lizardmen, Vampire Counts, and Beastmen. I know now that I need to pick one of these armies to play if I really do intend to stat playing again. I like having a spare army for teaching others the game, so I will likely keep what I have now, but I am planning to focus any playing (and painting) time on the Vampire Counts.
Thanks to Mike, Alan, and Bill for the challenge on Sunday, and for gracefully (and not some gracefully) welcoming me back to the game. Who knows where it will go from here.