Sports Eye for the 40K Guy; The Kickoff

Recently GW announced the death of Specialist Games, and with it, any hope of seeing any new support for Epic 40,000. This is the final push I needed. Finally, I can get this series of articles out my head and out to the community. Ironically, this series was my original idea for a segment before I went with the Tactical Terrain idea on the 11^th Company Podcast. No worry, that segment is here to stay. I wanted to use this as a way of broaden my wings a bit.

My first GW product was Blood Bowl. The old 1^st edition with the card board players and football was a game of endless enjoyment. One of my frequent opponents (and later the guru I followed in all things terrain building) suggested I join the rest of the gaming group and play Epic. “Given your play style in Blood Bowl, I know the perfect army for you.”

Prior to this moment, I have not played a military style game in a decade. Back then is was a DBA like historical battles or Squad Leader where the scenario gave you your list. No army building required. This sounded awesome! You get to build your army, your own color scheme, your identity and go head to head with other players. Nevertheless, I need a clue about military strategy since doing a term paper on Oliver Cromwell in the 5^th grade.

Blood Bowl was nice a crutch since is a sports game, and I have had lots of sport strategy experience. Not only did I play regularly, I also played several of those sports board games that slumber in dust covered corners of your local game store. These dinosaurs are facing extinction with the rise of the machines (Xbox & Nintendo, not SkyNet). Prior to the days of fantasy sports, this was how sports nerds got their game one. You would build teams, and then actually operated as the coach in head-to-head battles with your friends. You even use dice and cards. Moreover, to imagine this: every codex, I mean team, got an update annually.

Fast forward more years than I would like to admit. My best friend & preferred 40k enemy comes to me with a question. His son is getting into more organized sports. He needs to understand more of the big picture than “run with the ball”. So I explained the major sports in 40k terms to him. It was then I realized how similar the two really are even if their fan bases are so different.

That is what brings me here today. Over the next few months, we will look at some the fundamentals of what makes winning teams and sports, and apply these pieces of sage advice to the 40k.