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Greetings folks,

Today I wanted to talk a little about something I've been thinking on a bit since I got back into 40k, but the topic is a little “academic” so just be forewarned about that :-)

One of the reasons why I think I enjoy 40k, AoS, and other table-top-wargames is simply that it lets me interact with a form of art that I don't otherwise have pretty much any connection with (sculpture) and do it in a way that's pretty unique compared to the other forms of art that are already a meaningful part of my life.

Like many of you, I enjoy movies and books and television shows, and would even go so far as to call them meaningful additions to my life. I've laughed and cried at films, had days that were totally changed because of books, and had television shows that genuinely interacted with how I see my world. Yet, these things are primarily passive experiences for me. I watch or read them, and I think about them or talk about them, but there is a kind of distance that exists between the material and my experience of it. You could call it “non-interactive” or, to use a communications concept, reduce them to “one way communications”.

An argument could further be made that because of websites like this, of which a large portion of its appeal is in discussing a fictional universe filled with fictional concepts, these forms of art are not truly “non-interactive”, but their interactivity is largely separated from the art itself. I might, (to further muddy the waters,) do something like write my own story, or produce my own film that is inspired by these artworks- yet essentially I am still being separated from that initial art. My film/story/show may be based on it, but that isn't the same thing as BEING it.

So where does table-top-wargaming come in? Where is the 40k in this discussion of 40k?

To me, one of the most engaging and unique aspects of the hobby is not that I'm playing a game with strangers, or that I'm spending a lot of time analyzing rules and configuring some personal preference to interact with them (both of which exist outside of this hobby). To me, the part that makes this hobby unique is that, at it's heart, it is a way to see and experience a sort of joy of sculpture, but also to make that sculpture an aspect of your own creative will.

There are certainly those that strive to create models and armies and paint-jobs that don't deviate at all from the “proscribed” notion of how they are “supposed” to look or act, but it is my experience that these folks make up a minority of the hobby. Heck, most of the time, when I've met wargamers who insist on playing an Ultramarine army that could have been taken straight from Roboute Guilliman himself, they STILL show aspects of customization and artistic merit in things like pose, basing, or attention to detail. They may be “bog-standard” in some regards, but in the subtle details they choose to emphasize or ignore they can create models that seem to live and breathe a certain aesthetic, (which, it almost goes without saying, can be exceptionally enjoyable!)

More to the main theme I am getting at, I can't count the number of times I've seen someone pull out some painstaking conversion, kitbash, or proxy and the other gamers flock around it to admire its detail and imagination. Even BAD or SILLY examples like this tend to garner a certain respect, a certain artistic appraisal, and a create an aesthetic that creates immersion. If I were to venture an opinion, I would say that it almost seems less about the model itself, and more about the artistic will and communication that went into its creation.

It's my experience that we often translate this in shorthand to the: “Rule of Cool”, and many wargamers are absolutely devoted to this concept. The “Rule of Cool” needn't exist in something like gallery-paintings or mass market novels because we already give the artist in question the permission and expectation to interact with us as, well, an artist.

The other aspect of this that makes the entire hobby so frankly bizarre is it's nature as a game primarily concerned with art that you play with friends, acquaintances, and total strangers alike. I'm not really sure there IS another good example of this kind of thing, as even things like exceptionally customize-able MMO's tend to limit artistic freedom to a few aspects. That your freedom within the wargaming community, and the likes of 40k and it's brethren especially, is limited essentially to what you CAN do, makes this aspect almost limitless. You can spend two hours putting together a squad of space-marines, or you can spend two hundred, the choice is really up to you. The GAME aspect doesn't really play into this (beyond small bonuses for things like entirely painted armies).

Additionally, there is the visual aspect that appeals so much to us: the melding of styles and substance that comes into play when two painstakingly painted and modeled armies clash atop a suitably detailed backdrop of immersive terrain. There doesn't seem to be much within the artistic world to compare to this. You don't, for example, go into an art gallery and see how your own work looks alongside what they have chosen to display. Yet for many of us, this aspect is immersive, exciting, and even beautiful.
We take endless pictures displaying those same models that we have sitting on a shelf at home, only this time they seem to be alive with possibility. They are no longer pieces of plastic and metal lined up in a display case, they are mighty warriors that we have spent time with, doing battle with hated foes whose every aspect screams of something other than their own.

A battle within 40k thus becomes something quite different than a static diorama, an interactive fiction (like a computer game) or a written story. It becomes a clash not just of men and machine, or rules and tactics, but also of art. There are many ways this can go, from two players who share an aesthetic sensibility and talent and thus create an immersive and coherent narrative of like minded models in comprehensible conflict... to truly bizarre and surreal experiences in which proxy bits of paper or unpainted half-men wobble about around mountainous soda bottles and cardboard boxes.

Either way: it becomes a strange aesthetic exercise. It combines imagination, sportsmanship, artistic talent in things like painting and physical modeling, as well as pseudo military tactics, shared lore, and heaps of absurdity.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a great hobby, and also a unique one. Prior to becoming invested in 40k I never would have spent hours pouring over pictures of models, more hours assembling, modifying, painting and finishing them... and finally more time still actually confronting similar people and seeing that, against all odds, they too have stumbled into this peculiar blend of sculpture-assisted madness.

So, with all that said, this IS a forum, and what I want now is to open up discussion on your own thoughts regarding sculpture, art, and 40k. I would love to hear that I'm not the only person who has given these sorts of things some thought, and who knows: maybe together we can turn this into a good paper idea or something!

Or, heck, we might just have some damn fun talking about it. That's part of the hobby too, after all.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you all below! :-)

Very much so, it is basically an interactive diorama portraying events in the grimdarkness of the far future.

So it most definitely is sculpture and very, very subjective.

The fact that I can influence both the look(modeling), tone(painting), feel(narrative) & interactions(modeling/game)on the tabletop is what really motivates me to play the game(as crappy as it may be without houserules).

The preceeding will lead to a sense of investment and therefore attachment to 40k(as a whole). Which for some can distill into a fun & worthwhile hobby and for others, for it to fester and rot into a toxic mess that is so emotionally/monetarily attached to 40k.

The GAME aspect doesn't really play into this (beyond small bonuses for things like entirely painted armies).

Oh, but it does.
Writing your own fanfiction, creating a scenario with its own rules, inventing a campaign, writing profiles for your converted special chars - it's all literature and therefore art as well. And I consider that the default way to play 40K (but I know it's not the usual way when you play against strangers).
Besides that, I wholeheartedly agree with your well-written post, though

I think it's interesting that the OP uses 40K as the shorthand for the miniature wargaming hobby as a whole. The things under discussion are common to all sorts of miniature wargames to some degree or other, but the post discusses one brand, for sure the most well known brand, 40K.

I think this is always quite interesting in discussions of modern culture, how much brands and corporate considerations enter into it. 40K is full of art, for sure, but it is also an artless product produced for sale by people with little interest in that art.

I think that it's easier to create something if you're not tied to a brand but free to create as you feel like. It's an interesting tension that exists throughout modern life, as artists seeking fair compensation work for large corporations that assign them work or limit their art.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think this is always quite interesting in discussions of modern culture, how much brands and corporate considerations enter into it. 40K is full of art, for sure, but it is also an artless product produced for sale by people with little interest in that art.

I mean that's flat out just not true. I was fortunate to meet and talk with some of the people in the various design teams at GW at the start of 2019 including Phil Kelly, Jes Goodwin, and a fair few others (including the guy who made the Daemonkin Codex for 7th). I've yet to meet a group of people who were more dedicated to their art than that lot, especially Jes. These people aren't just in it for the paycheck and frankly, it's quite rude to dismiss their work as such.

I think that it's easier to create something if you're not tied to a brand but free to create as you feel like. It's an interesting tension that exists throughout modern life, as artists seeking fair compensation work for large corporations that assign them work or limit their art.

Artists seek fair compensation in every aspect of their profession not just ones that work with corporations, in fact working for a corporation is going to be more stable than commissioning, especially to the wider Internet. The number of people who message and say things like "I have 10k followers, you'll be getting exposure" or "I have 7k followers can you do me a discount" is frankly staggering. You also aren't completely free to do whatever you want any time because when you're hired you are hired to do a specific thing. Unless the brief is deliberately vague then you're still going to be constrained.
We've seen what people can do when they're given a pre-existing material as well and I would say that as far as brands go, GW brands have a lot more freedom than something like Star Wars or Marvel.

I've only interacted and been with a couple of Warmachine and Hordes groups personally, and heard of a few others from other gamers, but I feel safe in saying...

Warmachine players do not care for the artistic qualities of the game and modelling in the same way that 40k is on the whole. That's not to say there aren't people who paint their warmachine armies very well, but that sort of painting and custom modelling is quite rare. Warmachine is less about the visual, and more about the game. Flat, abstracted terrain. Where I started playing Warmahordes, I had a fully painted army and different options within a few months, and people who had played for years had barely touched their main armies. Anecdotal, but it seems to be a fairly familiar experience.

On the other hand of 40k's general culture of artistic libery, something like Bolt-action or Flames of War go in a different direction, where recreating life through art is the absolute goal. Period-appropriate camo and colors on the uniforms of your different national armies.

Gert: Sorry, I must not have been clear enough. When I talk of artists inside GW, I obviously mean people in the design studio. They are artists and I did not intend any disrespect to them. The artless sales aspect to it is the other stuff, the corporate structure around the artists that exists to sell product at maximum profit.

And my comment about artists existing in corporate or capitalist structures was also not meant to be a slight, just an observation of how much great art is seen purely as a commodity and how much of the art that I personally enjoy is seen that way.

But as a corpo GW is less and less artist friendly, I would say. They don't even credit their artists any more, which is very poor form I would say.

Thadin: I played Warmachine from Mk1 to Mk2 and cared about the artistic side of it just as much as I do in 40K. The awesome troll sculpts got me into the game, I loved the art and fiction and I put a lot of effort into painting and converting my dudes. Same as true of everyone I played with regularly.

All I can say to that is, I wish my groups had been like that. The sculpts are great, but the four or so different town's I've played it in, I've been it felt like nobody cared about things looking nice.

About GW not crediting artists any more... Maybe that's caused by GW carrying through with it's Codex's no longer having the authors on them, due to the harassment people would received for what others perceived as poor rules. I'm sure a lot of people would have harassed the Primaris sculptors for any myriad of gakky reasons. There's plenty of people who will take any 'reason' to 'justify' harassing people, and Warhammer community does, and still has a rather nasty subset in it that does that stuff.

Just a spitball theory as to why it maybe changed.

I've heard that a lot from players in North America so it must be what it was like over there. I was playing in Ireland, total population 5 million people, so it was a pretty small and close nit scene.