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I got into 40k as a kid almost 20 years ago and had a great many fun experiences with my friends. But whenever I tried playing at gaming stores, I had all these unpleasant social experiences with rules lawyers, powergamers, overgrown man-children, appalling sexists, people who are called "weaponized autists" on the internet these days, and the games just weren't any fun for me. So I played with my local friends instead. But over time life happened: I moved away, they moved away, and the groups split up. Wherever I moved to, I would covert my new friends, and we would have fun 40K games together.

However for a few years, I've been in a life situation where none of my local friends or family members still play 40k or have an interest in doing so, so the only option is local gaming stores again. After a hiatus from 6th and 7th edition, I dipped my toe back in but had a few of the same un-fun gaming store experiences I'd had before over the last two decades. I feel somewhat bitter having bought a bunch of 8th edition stuff only to have a 0% fun radio with any of the 8th edition games I played. Then COVID-19 hit and made the question moot, and I couldn't find anyone willing to play 40K on Tabletop Simulator--which honestly feels like it would kinda suck anyway compared to the real thing.

Now COVID is getting better in my my neck of the woods and 9th edition is out. So if I want to try again, it's time to buy expensive new books, and aside from the disappointing social aspect, I didn't actually like the way the game played in 8th edition at all. From what I see here, 9th edition is a refinement of 8th, but doesn't fix any of the real factors that made me not like it. It's so complicated and feels overwhelming to me. Like a lot of people I see here, I started making my own custom rules to at least make the game itself fun for me again: https://gitlab.com/Pointedstick/wasteland-tactics/. But with no local friends to play with, what's the point? There's GrimDark Future and ProHammer, but it's the same problem: these aren't going to be games I can get going at the local store with strangers.

I feel like I'm burning out. I have these models I've lovingly painted over the years, and so many enjoyable memories of time spent with my friends and them. I want to play with them again, but I don't see a way to do it and have fun.

Should I just buck up and buy the 9th edition stuff and grit my teeth and try to tolerate the gaming store 40k scene? Is anyone else feeling this too? What have you been doing about it? Maybe it's just COVID fatigue talking...

I can sympathise, and I promise i'm not taking the piss here: let's pretend you wrote this letter to the agony aunt of a magazine and you were talking about not 40k, but your love life:

You are still nostalgic about your first love [old friends, first time playing] but you need to let go and move on. One night stands [pick-up games] with girls [neckbeards] you met in dive bars [games stores] have never been the answer. You need to form a meaningful relationship with someone special [a games club] or put an ad in the lonely hearts column [dakka] and find a reliable f**k buddy [someone you can attend tournamants with]. Even a long distance relationship can be worth it.

That's amazing. Thanks.

Maybe this hobby isn't for you to be honest. If every single interaction outside of your friend group was negative the problem might be how you approach the game as opposed to how others do.

All your saying makes sense. I also have played with my own group for decades. Members have come and gone, but fortunately for me, a core of like-minded players have stayed together. Local tournaments have been fun for me because I have a core group with me. I would say my local scene is about 50/50 on players whose style does not mesh with me, or whose behavior I find toxic, and those I enjoyed a game with. It has taken time to sort them out.
(I use those terms purposefully, as few play the game a "wrong" way, only differently.)

As Paddy Mick said, you have managed to find your own groups of players multiple times in your life. It is daunting, but you need to do it again. Dakka can be a resource (as well as other forums). My group is also more casual about the game, uses a few house rules, and puts less emphasis on dominating the table. Often, newer players use our resources until they are sure they want to become a longer term member.

I seem to find the majority of players with that mindset post in the hobbying forums here rather than tactics. Keep looking, try some feelers, and don't give up.

Might have some luck getting retro feel with the Battle Bible, and close to 2nd Ed so maybe familiar for neckbeards like me for example.

9th is not worth buying into imho.

Don't buy it. Visit the store first. Feel the people out. Watch some games.

What was it about 8th that you didn't like?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Don't buy it. Visit the store first. Feel the people out. Watch some games.

What was it about 8th that you didn't like?

I didn't like:

- How the rules are scattered across so many books, making it so hard to learn and remember everything. I don't have the neuroplasticity of a 15 year-old anymore.
- How many dice you had to roll and re-roll to do anything
- How many more units there are now compared to when I played a few years prior, and how many units had bucketloads of custom rules; these made it difficult for me to learn my opponents' armies and I kept falling victim to "gotcha" moments where some special rule I hadn't known about or remembered would turn into an auto-win condition for my opponent. The number of marine units in particular is just crazy now; I gave up trying to learn what they all were in advance.
- The fiddliness and gaminess of strategems, warlord traits, relics, and other "invisible" upgrades that you can be surprised by
- The new wound table and AP system
- How fast everything was, which de-valued genuinely fast units and transport vehicles
- How terrain felt like an afterthought (seems to be fixed in 9th, but what I can see the terrain rules are now super complicated)
- How useless flamer and blast type weapons were (seems to be somewhat improved in 9th)
- How durable tough models were with high saves, re-rolls, FNP, re-rolls, etc
- How vehicles no longer really felt like vehicles, with anti-tank weapons just plinking off a few wounds at a time
- Unlimited daemon summoning in Narrative Play (local GW store requires it)
- How many of my Ork units were banished to Legends with terrible rules

Pointed Stick wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Don't buy it. Visit the store first. Feel the people out. Watch some games.

What was it about 8th that you didn't like?

I didn't like:

- How the rules are scattered across so many books, making it so hard to learn and remember everything. I don't have the neuroplasticity of a 15 year-old anymore.
- How many dice you had to roll and re-roll to do anything
- How many more units there are now compared to when I played a few years prior, and how many units had bucketloads of custom rules; these made it difficult for me to learn my opponents' armies and I kept falling victim to "gotcha" moments where some special rule I hadn't known about or remembered would turn into an auto-win condition for my opponent. The number of marine units in particular is just crazy now; I gave up trying to learn what they all were in advance.
- The fiddliness and gaminess of strategems, warlord traits, relics, and other "invisible" upgrades that you can be surprised by
- The new wound table and AP system
- How fast everything was, which de-valued genuinely fast units and transport vehicles
- How terrain felt like an afterthought (seems to be fixed in 9th, but what I can see the terrain rules are now super complicated)
- How useless flamer and blast type weapons were (seems to be somewhat improved in 9th)
- How durable tough models were with high saves, re-rolls, FNP, re-rolls, etc
- How vehicles no longer really felt like vehicles, with anti-tank weapons just plinking off a few wounds at a time
- Unlimited daemon summoning in Narrative Play (local GW store requires it)
- How many of my Ork units were banished to Legends with terrible rules

Well good news and bad news --

Good:
- Rerolls are cut way down
- Strats are getting cleaned up and toned down
- Terrain is pretty good - you just need time in it - I played many games where the keywords got jumbled
- Durable models - I think durable is good - lends to more interesting outcomes, but now there are other types of durability that adds ( to me ) a very interesting layer to the game
- Many anti-tank weapons have elevated in strength so far ( and with the reroll cleanout it has caused a lot of vehicles to go into hiding for the moment )

Bad:
- Rules across many books, but the rule clarity and quality has gone up
- Ork units gone. :( I bet we'll see some return with their codex though
- If you don't have an updated book it might take longer to get your hands around what works and what doesn't

Other:
- Gotcha moments can be eliminated by asking good questions ( and also when I finish my tool if I can get my brain to work again )
- I think you'd find fast units more useful now, but it depends on your army, list, and other factors that you'll be unfamiliar with
- I'm no spring chicken either so repetition helps tons with rules
- Unlimited summoning? Gross.

Hey man, I super sympathize with disillusionment with how the game has evolved since the meta started forming after indexes in 8th. I imagine you already have and answer for this, haha, but have you tried getting in touch with the friends that you used to play with?

It could be that they miss the good old days too, even just a little. Instead of trying to get your gaming fix with the neckbeards at the local game shop, maybe try instead to plan a once- or twice- yearly thing where you get the old gang back together for a day or two, and just fething nerd it up at one of your houses. Maybe instead of following GWs burn-and-churn rulebooks, just have a fun campaign, or a casual tournament, so instead of chasing the meta, you could focus some of your hobby on rules/scenario making, and building terrain.

I imagine some of your friends probably don't have their armies anymore, but if you're still hot for collecting, why not just lend them a smaller one of yours? I've been trying to get tiny (troop & HQ) forces put together, just so me and my friends out here (who aren't super savvy about wargaming at all, but curious about the little men I have stashed around my apartment) can have quick lil pickup games.
Anyway, good luck re-kindling the hobby spirit! Sounds like you really have a lot of love for the game, and that's always cool - hope you can find that spark you're looking for!

 Pointed Stick wrote:
I got into 40k as a kid almost 20 years ago and had a great many fun experiences with my friends. But whenever I tried playing at gaming stores, I had all these unpleasant social experiences with rules lawyers, powergamers, overgrown man-children, appalling sexists, people who are called "weaponized autists" on the internet these days, and the games just weren't any fun for me.

Should I just buck up and buy the 9th edition stuff and grit my teeth and try to tolerate the gaming store 40k scene? Is anyone else feeling this too? What have you been doing about it? Maybe it's just COVID fatigue talking...

What is a "weaponized autist?"

I don't actually have any other armies; only ever played Orks. So Building starter forces for others to play with is a great idea! I like that.

One impediment is that I feel like I don't know the other armies anymore after the 8th edition reboot. The whole game feels so different to me. And it could all just change again; the little starter sets I put together could be useless and obsolete soon enough. This happened for a bunch of my Ork units and I spent a bunch of time converting them to be "current" and I'm not real eager to do a lot of that again. I'm not interested in jumping on the treadmill and keeping up with a money-pit metagame.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

 Pointed Stick wrote:
I got into 40k as a kid almost 20 years ago and had a great many fun experiences with my friends. But whenever I tried playing at gaming stores, I had all these unpleasant social experiences with rules lawyers, powergamers, overgrown man-children, appalling sexists, people who are called "weaponized autists" on the internet these days, and the games just weren't any fun for me.

Should I just buck up and buy the 9th edition stuff and grit my teeth and try to tolerate the gaming store 40k scene? Is anyone else feeling this too? What have you been doing about it? Maybe it's just COVID fatigue talking...

What is a "weaponized autist?"

The term became popular to describe people participating in a crowd sourced effort to find a flag at an undisclosed location on a "CCTV feed based primarily on studying the flight paths of planes in the background of the feed."

Now that can either apply to people who get into obsessive details of rules and mechanics as a person with autism might be stereotyped to be, or it could be a reference to the "alt right" 4chan crowd. The OP could be referring to either or both, though I would hazard a guess he means the latter.

Thanks to 4chan, "autist" has come to mean "anyone who shows any level of passion, interest, or enthusiasm for any given topic".

It may be steadily being replaced by "consoom" (but that's more based around showing any level of passion, interest, or enthusiasm for a new product), but either way, it's still utter nonsense.

I would almost just recommend you find an RPG group that is willing to play in the 40k universe.

Yeah, as someone who works with SEND kids, the internet shitposter shorthands 'Autist' and 'Sperg' are really pretty distasteful and nasty ways of just ridiculing people who are a bit different, socially awkward or overenthusiastic, and don't actually reflect much of people with those conditions at all. Hearing an actual kid with Autism say that they don't like how they hear other kids in the playground call each other 'autist' for doing something stupid was pretty sad. I've seen them crop up on Dakka as much as everywhere else online recently, and it feels like if people were using the word people used like 10 years ago - you know the one, begins with "r", generally frowned upon by decent people - the mods would crack down on it much more sharply.
I don't think Weaponized Autism is even being particularly correctly used here, in terms of internet meaning, as it's typically for people with like no social life who spend a huge amount of time tracking, manipulating or following information in order to accomplish a specific objective, and has practically nothing to do with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

To get back to the topic: I sympathise with the OP, as I share a lot of his sentiments about the current state of 40K.

For me the solution might be - once the Rona allows me to meet folks regularly again - to go back to 5th edition. I have all the books I need, and with some houserules it feels close to "perfect 40K to me".

Best of luck you can find somethign similar!

I get what you are saying but sounds like some bad luck, I've had an amazing time with most of my pick up games. Genuine good people some I've been friends with since for a very long time. If you won't put yourself out there you can't find the good but they can be found.

Can be some burn out but you can work through it. I won't lie though, it's been awhile since my last game so I am pretty rusty so it could have all gone to crap while I was away.

I always said as soon as I didn't enjoy to play the game anymore I'd walk away, hadn't gotten there yet so there is faith you can be alright as well, given time to learn and find some good folk, otherwise perhaps walking away is best.

if you don't have friends to play you can always just focus on the model part of the hobby
(scale models are a thing and there are enough people out there just having fun building and painting models) and/or play at events

Tournaments are a tricky thing for some but for a lot of people those are the only option to play at all and my personal experience for them is very positive and much better than the Game Store one

but I can feel you and my suggestion would be to not buy anything for now
40k is not worth the money without a fixed group to play (and for a bad time at the store the rules given by BattleScribe or other sources are enough)

@posermcbogus, that's sound advice; as is getting into an older edition, if you can find people, and not feeling like you need to keep up.

I would add that I have found the highest success rate in meeting cool fellow gamers by playing Blood Bowl. Why not paint up a Goblin team, lose every game, but have some fun and hopefully make some friends?

Also, just get the free download of core rules for 9th ed and look up the rest on battlescribe and wahapedia, so you don't invest any more $ until you want to.

Build/find a new group. Takes a while, but this is the only real.answer. store based gaming is basically thr gaming equivalent of a 'one night stand' at times and there's enough anecdotes out there of toxic stores/groups that a bit of wariness is not misplaced.

But the garage scene is a thing. You got to find the players though.

Find friends and play at houses. I found a couple of colleagues and old friends who got back into Warhammern in lockdown and now our little 4-5 person group is now 10 strong, we’ve set up a Discord to hobby together and spend less time in internet cesspools, and we have some great games mentally pencilled in for when we’re allowed. Given the weather is getting better Garagehammer and Gardenhammer will be back on soon!

Also 9th is fun, and it means people can buy the latest shinies. If you insist on a home ruleset or an old edition you limit your potential opponents.

Sounds like you might want to try KillTeam or Horus Heresy instead of regular 40K? AFAIK the playerbase of these more niche games is a lot more "tolerable" for lack of a better term

I have never played 40K in a store and never will. Its gaming behind closed doors with a bunch of people I know or GTFO

Before Covid, I did most of my gaming for the past few years at my local Warhammer store, and at tournaments.

Tournaments, generally, bring out the best people are are always lots of fun.

I find that the gamers at the local level tend to be the more awkward ones, and I had a few of those at my store. But, I also had a lot of great people I could meet up with and game with as well. Took me some time to get to know who to avoid/who was fun to play with, and the local store's facebook page was a great way to organize games beforehand so I knew what I was getting into.

When I moved to the city I'm at now, I knew no-one in the hobby. I started by just spending some free time at the store doing hobby and getting to know people before I even rolled any dice, which I think helped pay off a lot for me. I am pretty terrible at winning any 40k game I play, so I'm not usually too fussed with what I'm playing against lol.

Just before COIVD, I was introduced to a local club of like-minded fellows, which has been great.

For the 40k itself, Personally, and for my local club, it's the most fun it's been in a while. We love it. As with learning any game though, it'll take time to get the hang of the rules. That can only be done by getting in the games, and no other way. If you don't want to do that, then there isn't much point.

You play the game because it's fun, if it's not fun and you don't think it'll be fun, then there isn't any point investing the effort.

But, I recommend starting with small games (1000pts). Quicker to play, easier to learn with. If you communicate with your local group and express that you're trying to get back into the swing of things, there should be folks willing to appreciate that and help.

If Covid has taught me anything relating to wargaming, it's that as a grown adult, I know what I like, and I know which people I like to play with. I went from generally randomly playing a person picked from a group of ~40-50 at any given time between regular and irregular players, and only really enjoying about 1/2 of my games. Covid forced me to play only a couple of games in any given month, carefully masked, generally at my house, and so those games were pre planned with people I knew I'd like to play with.

I've also kind of broadened my horizons to other systems (helped by my lockdown hobby of 3d printing) I've gotten into Titianicus which reminds me of old school battletech, and a ww2 game called battlegroup which is basically everything I wished 5th edition 40k was while I played that, and a real old friend of mine and me are steadily building up russian and german ww2 forces in anticipation of a big battle of Kursk game once it gets nice enough and light out late enough to hang on my deck rolling dice and drinking beers.

And the game's back to where it was for me again. I feel a lovely sense of nostalgia every time I sit down to play a game of 9th because what I was actually missing was sitting down at a table with someone who wants to create a cool scenario on the table and wants to use the dice and the rules to see what happens. I never used to understand or know all the rules in the game back in 5th, and it didn't really bother me back then. The system was sprawling, and the thing that drew me in was that fact that there was a seemingly limitless number of armies that were all doing their own thing.

It is a social game. The game itself has entertaining background but naff rules (far better options exist for skirmish/company/battalion games), so the people you play with are critical. I see you are in the US so don't have the same club scene the UK has and are far more reliant on shops. That I think changes the dynamic a fair bit and any UK specific advice wouldn't be as useful to you.

But in short get the right group of people and have fun again.

I'm in the weird minority that thinks there's no game out there so good it can survive contact with donkey-caves, so, *shrug*

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm in the weird minority that thinks there's no game out there so good it can survive contact with donkey-caves, so, *shrug*

What, crappy people are system/fandom/<group> agnostic? You'll turn the world upside down with that kind of talk.

One suggestion: make a slight alteration to the way you play games. One thing that worked very well for me a little while ago was not to find a good gaming group, but find just one good gamer you enjoy playing with. And then dive into narrative gaming (did this with Age of Sigmar: https://ttgamingdiary.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/the-realmgate-wars-a-retrospective/).

With narrative gaming you dispense with the 'killer army build' attitude because instantly it does not really matter who wins. It is the 'story' that is important and you are really just looking for 'cool things happening on the table'. You will have the perfect excuse to bring out all those units that are not performing so well competitively because how they perform is of secondary importance in narrative.

It kinda goes back to the way I was playing these games when I was a kid (YMMV on that, obviously). However, it does open the gate wide to the really cool things about these games, which is the background and pretty models.

I've had a group of people I've played with on and off since back in 2nd edition days too. We generally can't stand 8th/9th edition either - and not wanting to "keep up" with the current state of the game precludes us from playing in most stores and/or with other groups that only wan to play the current edition.

Here are some general suggestions:

(1) Recognize that many people do and/or are willing to play "OldHammer" (i.e. classic editions of the game). Check my signature (self plug, sorry!) for ProHammer - which is a unified set of rules that let you combine any codexes from 3rd-7th edition and play against each other. We've been using this in my group for the past 6-7 months now. You can get old codexes for CHEAP used - or maybe you still have some you've held onto?

(2) Consider purchasing and learning how to use Tabletop Simulator (TTS). There are active TTS discord channels where you can find tons of people playing games and sharing resources. We switched to this during Covid and it's been pretty remarkable. Some in our group even hinting that maybe we don't ever need to go back to the physical game (so many models, terrain, etc. at your fingertips with TTS. No wallet pain, etc.). If you have friends across the country that might still want to play, you could 100% do this through TTS. You do need a somewhat decent computer though since there can be a lot of 3D models on screen.