Hobby Synergy

There has *never* been a better time to be starting a Warhammer 40,000 army in North Texas.

That is a pretty unqualified statement, I know--but consider how much play value is available to a hobbyist who decides to begin playing 40K right now (or start a new army for same):

1. a purchase of any basic Citadel box set (a cost of as little as under thirty bucks) from The Gamers Realm gives admission to their months-long Escalation League.
2. a minimum purchase of forty-five bucks worth of GW product from Lone Star Comics Dallas gives admission to their months-long Escalation League.
3. there was no additional cost to participate in XMax Games' Moon XM campaign, which included brand-new campaign mission designed to allow new forces onto the table in small points increments and a two-day, five round Doubles tourney Mar 20-21--and they will be starting another all-new, no-cost-to-play mapbased campaign (using Planetary Empires) April 3.
4. HobbytownUSA Dallas just completed a centerpiece modeling and painting contest.
5. Lone Star Comics Mesquite will offer a multi-player mega-battle in early June.

And those are just the events local retailers have made Adeptus North Texas aware of; I know the Grapevine and Frisco GW stores have ongoing events which would be complementary (not least of which is their excellent Academy programs), Comic Asylum and Area 51 regularly run events and contests for 40K, most of the other Lone Star locations have their own events (particularly the Plano crew), Comic Book Craze in Garland continues to build their GW presence, etc.

In terms of entertainment bang for the buck--it doesn't easily get better than this.

Supporting local stockists who make space available for play and--perhaps even more importantly--put effort into events which keep the hobby fresh and fun is the best way hobbyists can ensure such stockists remain. When they make such supporting purchases this good a value, everyone benefits. A squad or similar box from TGR, a beast from HTUD and the minimum Lone Star Dallas purchase could come in at about a hundred dollars--and produce *months* of league and campaign play, until summer. That kind of synergy didn't exist in North Texas until very recently. Let's ensure, as customers, it remains.
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Space Hulk: The Heresy

One of the (many) things Warhammer 40,000 hobbyists, designers and the keepers of Intellectual Property at Games Workshop seem perpetually of two camps about is playing the events of the 31st Millennium Horus Heresy out in miniature.

If *I* were emperor, the Horus Heresy would never have been explored in the kind of detail the recent Black Library novel series has done--precisely because it has added very little (one really strong book, a couple higher quality books, and a raft of under-par disappointments) and robbed the Warhammer 40,000 background of mystery, stature and scope in the process. Mythic events stay mythic better when we concretely *know* very little about them.

Fantasy Flight Games' new and expansive board game Horus Heresy will provide additional detail...and bring the events of the Heresy that much closer to game play (admittedly still not in miniature--though the game pieces look very much like the sorts of things we miniatures hobbyists will *have* to have...).

And GW itself has occasionally toyed with recreating the Heresy in 28mm--though usually for 'showpiece' events like the GamesDay Seige of Terra table--while steadfastly positing that there will never be official rules or models supplementing the existing forty-first millennium background with armies, characters and events from ten thousand years earlier.

That is pretty much my preference, as well; when you start statting up Leman Russ, Magnus, Horus and the Emperor for 40K play, their magic goes away (see 'destroying the mythic' above).

*If* I had the power, however, I *would* explore the Heresy in miniature, in a very specific way--a way GW themselves have recently templated for us, so successfully: I would release a self-contained game, with the draw being the specific models everyone would like to have from the Heresy, in a limited edition. In other words: Space Hulk: The Heresy. Purists would get it for the ability to possess 'official' Guileman or Dorn or Mortarion miniatures, 40K players would get it to turn the included models into their own elite, ornate Ultramarine or Imperial Fist or Death Guard characters, GW would make a short fortune...and be able to 'officially' say there still weren't 40K minis (or more importantly, statistics) for Heresy-era figures.

If such a game were successful (and does anyone think it would not be?), GW could cover the major Heresy players in supplemental releases, over a series of years.

Imagine the first limited edition game recreating Horus' battle barge in Space Hulk board tiles (compatible with existing segments, of course, and of the same extraordinary quality) and featuring the confrontation between Horus and the Emperor; perhaps in addition to those two awesome miniatures might come Sanguinius, figures of Heresy-era Blood Angels and Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus/Black Legion. I'd even find a way to put the villain Erebus from the Word Bearers in there, to balance the Blood Angel primarch. What hobbyist would not want such a game? Follow that a year later with a supplement pitting Guileman against Alpharius, with Heresy era Ultramarines and Alpha Legion, or Perturabo and Iron Warriors against Rogal Dorn and Imperial Fists. Culminate the series with the piece de resistance: Leman Russ and his Space Wolves against The Thousand Sons and Magnus the Red, all with exquisite Citadel limited-edition 28mm models--40K scale miniatures that still were not 'really' 40K Heresy-era products--and GW could bridge both Heresy camps...at a likely considerable profit, besides. Win/Win/Win.

All I ask for suggesting the idea is a copy of my own of each game--and (for purely selfish reasons) that the Mortarion sculpt look especially wicked cool :)
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