I started off doing really well with them and had a higher win-lose rate which was a nice change from playing Genestealer Cults. Lately I've had more losses than wins but I put that down to playing some good players and just relaxing with the game. I have fun, win or lose, and that is the point.
Lately I had a really good battle against the new Sisters of Battle codex. The way my opponent had spoken about them and the things they could do, I was expecting to get steamrolled but it turned out to be one of the better games I have had of late. We both inflicted severe casualties upon one another but I was able to score enough victory points to give me the edge.
Other recent matches against Grey Knights and Necrons have not gone so well. I've enjoyed the games but have come away a little disjointed. Were the dice not in my favour, did my opponent have more tactical skill than me, was there anything I could have done better? I dwell on things like that a little too much when I have a losing streak. My most recent game was against Tau using tactical objectives but on a table where we didn't have a lot of LOS blocking terrain which was just playing into my opponent's favour. Good game but walked away afterwards feeling rather put out. Not by my opponent. He was a good fair player and a good sport. I felt that in some way the game had cheated me. By skill alone, my opponent was someone who I should have beaten fairly easily and it didn't turn out that way.
In other news and something else that may have put me in the current gaming funk... I've been trying to organise a new 40K league. When I set the club up nearly 15 years ago we had several players and we used to run frequent leagues. Some were just play everyone. Some were map/tile control type ones with similar rules to the old Mighty Empires. The thing is everyone enjoyed them and we had a good time. Most of those players have either now given up the game, moved to other games (Horus Heresy for one) or just don't aren't all that interested anymore. The club has grown since those days and we have a host of new members. The issue is that they aren't the same people and some of them don't want to play a league for various reasons.
In 2019 I started up a narrative campaign using the Vigilus books and initially it seemed well received. After a couple months it started to go south. It seemed some didn't want to play the narrative style missions because they weren't 100% fair (bare in mind this was a fun narrative campaign with no reward for which player or faction won at the end) and gave up. Some didn't like the little narrative rules for each round. Others felt that they couldn't commit due to obvious real life issues, which is fair enough but as each round was 4 weeks long I just felt that that response was an excuse. After five months I think I had had enough and just dropped it. That was probably when I stopped posting on here as much.
Flash forward to a couple months ago and suddenly there are posters on our club Facebook page asking about a league. A discussion started and I started to become hopeful that maybe we could get the good old days of the club back up again. But then it started to go south again. Some people were interested but only if the army lists were fixed. Some don't like the idea of fixed lists because they get bored. Some didn't want to stick to the same codex because they would get bored. Straight away my hopes of getting this off the ground felt like they were being dashed.
Thankfully, the guiding light of the Astronomicon has pulled me through this and we have several of us actually going to try it out. We are going to be playing 1500 points, fixed lists including warlord trait, artefact, psychic powers, relics and pre-spent stratagems. I've got the players giving me their lists at the moment and once I have them, I'll assign an Eternal War mission to each round before I randomly assign opponents for each round. I have hopes that the players involved will stick to it and we can have a league like the good old days of the club.
I suppose the problem is that I feel our club has become somewhat stagnant. We have some great people who I am pleased to call good friends. We just don't get much in the way of fresh blood and if we do, they don't seem to last long. We don't just play 40K. There is some small interest in Age of Sigmar. We have a fair bit of interest in Necromunda, and a few of the guys enjoy Horus Heresy and Adeptus Titanicus. In the past Bolt Action was popular among a few. I sometimes feel that these games get in the way of 40K which was our original focal point but obviously as long as people are playing I'm happy. That's the point.
I want to feel empowered again by this hobby that I love but lately, this past year or so, I'm just not feeling it. I'm sure it isn't just the club or the games, but it feels like it. I think once I set this new league in motion (I am playing in it too) than I'll step back a bit and see if I can't try and find my niche in things again.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :)
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