When I was in middle school, I and a couple of friends got somewhat into Warhammer 40000, a game of space marines played on a tabletop with dice and rulers. We never really understood the game at any level, and played with some half-understood amalgam of rules. Really, we just liked collecting the miniatures and painting them.

Flash forward ten years, and I found myself in a new city (Austin, TX) having graduated college. I had relatively few friends, knew next to no one in the area, and I met someone who would become a close friend who introduced me to a game that was (at the time) relatively new – Warmachine. It reminded me of the 40k games I’d once played, but the world that was crafted for the game was much more compelling to me. I played it avidly with my friends in Austin, and only stopped when I left for a new city.

I find the game compelling because it’s a game about planning and execution, with enough randomness to keep things interesting. It also is a game that extends beyond the tabletop, where painting and planning play a major role. It offers the deckbuilding concepts that I love in games like Magic without the need to micromanage probabilities to the same extent, which I can do but don’t find terribly compelling.

I’ve recently gotten back into the game, and I find it fun to catch up on everything that’s happened since my lengthy hiatus.