From the workbench of the esteemed Horati0nosebl0wer

As time moves on so too do touchpoints of pop culture references for geekdom. The Harryhausen inclusion to my armies will likely not hold as much value for others as I place on them. I feel the last great age of fantastic film was in the 80s and perhaps the 90s. The magic was in going into the story cave where sorcerers showed what great things could be witnessed. The cinema experience was a unique and private thing of singular attention on a shining screen in the dark. Now, how does the work any one of us build creates value?

What things can I imagine and share through the clumsy hands of mine? The overall build of the army and the poking of other people’s brains. Is fantasy wargaming limited to the perennial of Tolkien? I should hope not. As much as I like the story of grand scale which makes someone feel small where danger is very real it has a limit. I can look at the bog standard trope elf, dwarf or halfling and then give a shrug. I have no excitement for the ‘possible albeit improbable’ at that point. The joy of new worlds is no longer able to be transferred as easily as it could. Miniatures which have underlying layers to interpretation are being made now as a fight against this sensation but the overwhelming sense of loss remains. That era of the 80s/90s has passed and is difficult to recapture with physical media (even going to the length of using metal). The postmodern zeitgeist is The Void which sits unfulfilled like an empty stomach. A tongue given no flavor has no sense of taste. Eyes given no light or motion grow dim with muted colors. The ears go dull without the roar of joy or groan of defeat. Screens have replaced a great many boards and the ‘what migh have been’ given in visual frequencies that turn people into addicts.

Maybe this is where the smallness of the world is good again, the retreat from More is More to understand the scale of what we are amazed by. The draw down in model count, the epic scale creep and the deeply personal narrative from extended play are more appealing. The cultural implications in all of this is bigger than I can address but suffice to say I think the gaming world touches on things earlier. How do we as gamers make the game shop we play track onto the mythology of the real world? I think that’s what presently might be going on. It just sucks to see personal relevance slowly sink and that includes the work I do even for fun. It’d be easy to stick around as a horseshoe crab but really dull. Living fossils are like zombies, undaunted by time but not truly alive. Maybe I’ve also found my true dislike for historicals.