While I've always had the true gamer-spirit, I guess you could say I've only been a gamer for six years. I started with Magic: The Gathering (read: cardboard crack) my freshman year of high school. The following year came Cheapass Games, and the year after that was D&D. The rest is history.
For six years, I stayed out of miniature war-gaming. I didn't just stay out of "minis"; I avoided them completely. I mocked those who spent countless hours painting the eyebrows on the miniscule faces of their Eldar warriors. I considered myself inherently better than the guys who carried chests full of pewter people. But now that has all changed.
About a month ago I started playing Mage Knight.
This isn't my fault, though. You have to understand, miniature war gaming is a terribly expensive habit. A starting Warhammer 40K army will set you back $80, and that's just the bare-bones necessities in order to play. One couldn't even dream of being competitive without shelling out hundreds of more dollars.
You see it isn't my fault, because a good friend of mine started playing first. I couldn't allow him to go destitute alone. As I see it, my taking up Mage Knight is a way for me to help the burden of my friend's grief. No, really!
The good news is that Mage Knight is extremely cheap when compared to Warhammer. You can get started for around $20. After that, five extra pieces just run about $7. This averts the cost-prohibitive stereotype of miniature gaming.
The bad news is, it is collectible and you don't know which pieces you've "pulled" until after you buy them. This invokes the cost-prohibitive stereotype of collectible-card games.
Let's just say I've cut back on fast food, going to see movies and the purchasing of comic books.
The other thing Mage Knight has going for it is that the pieces are pre-painted. Miniature war-gaming purists will scoff at this fact and call it "a sign that the gaming community is losing its very moral fiber," but those guys are also train-gamers, so you can just point and laugh at them. Silly train gamers! Ha-ha!
You see, because Mage Knight figures are already painted, the time required to enjoy the hobby is significantly reduced. Mage Knight is so easy to get into that even our nation's president could trade in his full-size war-gaming hobby for a miniatures-war-gaming hobby, if he so chose. (We could only be so lucky!)
Like all games of all types, however, the true reason for the addiction of miniature gaming is the social aspect. Most all paper-and-dice role-playing gamers have, at some point in their life, bought a system for role-playing and never actually played it because they could not get people to play with them. The rulebook sat on their shelf and collected dust.
Muncie's gaming pusher and dealer, the Wizard's Keep, has a wonderful solution to that: the business arranges a game every Saturday! That's right, it is guaranteed that at least one day a week I can be sure to see my Mage Knight army completely demoralized and demolished before my very eyes. What fun!
Hey, at least I'm not a train-gamer, right?
Write to Mouse at bbmcshane@bsu.edu
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