I’m Playing Games
Tonight my feet and throat are a little sore. I spent the evening playing Infinity at Boutique FDB and then being seduced by the Batman Miniatures Game. As I sat here I realized something important: I am finally playing the games I’ve wanted to play for so many years.
A staged shot of my miniatures using my cell phone. I’ll have to bring my camera gear next time.
Very recently I came to the conclusion, when looking to spend some hobby money, that I just wasn’t going to play any miniature wargames. My plan to get my friends to play Deadzone failed and the local community I used to know had faded away.
Throughout my long miniature wargaming career I haven’t really played anything. When I started I painted too slowly, and now that I paint at a reasonable rate I wanted to play the games I was interested instead of what was popular. I wouldn’t be unfair to say that I was too picky.
At first this realization really bothered me. My friends come to my house for boardgames every two weeks and I’ve run a couple of limited RPG campaigns in the last year. This wasn’t bad, but the thought that I may have to abandon my hopes of wargaming for merely painting for personal enjoyment wasn’t one I liked. Yet this was the reality I was faced with.
There was no way I was going to accept this state of affairs. Inspired by a new acquaintance who mentioned the game, as well as a friend who was pushing me towards it, I decided to give Warmachine another try. I had given it a hard look a few years ago when their second edition was in open beta. I eventually decided I didn’t like the aesthetic of the miniatures and gave it a pass. Now that my only other option was to play nothing I felt I should swallow my pride and just play the game.
At the very least I’d have a couple of cool robots for my miniatures shelf.
You can read about my Warmachine experience in this series of guest posts on Creative Twilight. I won’t spoil anything on this blog since the series isn’t yet finished.
After playing Warmachine my desire to play other games grew stronger until I finally started looking for a group playing Infinity. If I had to pick a favorite game it would be Infinity. I had played it once years ago but the Friday night schedule conflicted with my board game night. Even if I went every second week that meant I’d never have any Friday nights with my wife.
It turns out that the same group I had once tried to join was playing a second night of the week at Boutique FDB. One of their more active members couldn’t play Fridays so the community was expanding to this new night. The store wasn’t as close as the one playing Warmachine but I decided I wanted to make the trip anyway.
I’ve even started painting my Infinity miniatures again. Here a Nomad Vertigo Zond Remote has been flatted.
I am glad I did, especially as it seems that there were two new players getting a demo game. What a perfect time to join as we’d have plenty of opponents of the same skill level with small armies. I do have to tip my hat to Warmachine though. If I hadn’t started playing Warmachine I wouldn’t have stoked my desire to play Infinity enough to hunt down this group.
Hopefully this means that I’ll start generating all sorts of new content for the blog. In the meantime check out the Crits Kill People blog run by some members of the local Infinity community.
Have you ever had to make the choice to play a game you otherwise wouldn’t? Let me know in the comments. You can also contact me on Twitter and Google+. Don’t forget to subscribe; if I’m not posting new content here I’ll link to the guest posts I’m writing so you don’t miss anything.
I’ve been in a similar boat, that’s for sure! Most of the miniature games that I play/want to play have no support by the rest of my group. The only game that I know I have a regular opponent for is Dust Warfare (which I really like, so that’s good). Infinity fell out of favour and no one is interested in 15mm sci fi, Heavy Gear, historical gaming like Ronin or SAGA, nor any of the spaceship based games I’ve collected and/or proposed. Honestly it can get a little exasperating (as I’m sure you know).
The game that was going to “bring us all together” was Deadzone, but in the end we found that it didn’t really scratch that itch we were looking for and with some balance problems to boot I don’t really see much of a future for it in our group.
What I’ve done is take matters in my own hands by pretty much always getting two forces so I can play it with my friends even if they don’t own the game themselves. Hopefully they’ll like it well enough to invest themselves, and if not well… I at least get to play the game. I have also become much more relaxed with my “prefered player parameters” and try to look outside my immediate circle for interested players.
Glad to hear you got a game in! Hopefully the it’s a trend that’ll continue. 🙂
It has so far, I played a game again last night. I know exactly how you feel although it does sound like you have some people who will play a miniatures game with you. Just need to get them into the game.
Out of curiosity what’s made Infinity fall off? Our group has mentioned the idea of limiting the game to 3 orders per model per turn for people that are bothered by cheerleaders. There’s a certain type of player, of which I am one, who likes to use his grunts instead of leaving them in my back field as order generators. Personally I don’t mind people doing rambo runs. If you are setup to defend against it and do so successfully they are often in a bad position.
Congratulations on finding an Infinity group. I too had trouble finding people to play Infinity with until early this year. It’s a game I’m enjoying a lot, but being an skirmish level game means that I’m also able to play it on weekdays, when I have less free time, which is a big plus.
Tenshi, I know exactly what you mean about being able to play on weekdays. That’s a big plus for me as my weekends are when I get to spend time with my family. With Infinity you can even get a couple of games in during an evening.