Greetings from your cousins across the pond! My name is Ryan Geiler and I’m writing you from St. Joseph, Missouri in the United States of America. This puts me rather smack in the middle of our so called ‘bread basket’ (Or Bible belt depending to whom you speak). Our town is a rather small town by American standards (80,000 pop.) and we have a local group of friends that meets weekly in my recreation room to ‘bash our miniature soldiers’ (As my wife would say) across the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. We truly are ‘basement gamers’. I write you today partly in praise and partly as a bit of a critique. I’ve purchased Games Workshop games for quite a number of years and am an avid fan of the background/miniatures. I’ve seen many editions and changes come and go, some viewed favorably, some not so much! However, through every edition; the love for the game, the background and the miniatures were never in doubt (and those trump any changes to the system over the years).

I don’t mean to ramble as above but I want to provide my history involved with the game and hopefully from this experience, establish perspective. Fifth Edition has been well received in our group, possibly the best reception of any incarnation of Warhammer 40K (since our relative ‘virgin’ editions, as that new introduction to the game remains elusively grand in our memories). I believe this reception is born out of a shift in design philosophy and our group wanted to commend you on this. Armies ‘feel’ like the fluff, play like their fiction and help us immerse ourselves into the game. True LOS really drives this home for us, with each round of the game consisting of LOS ‘snapshots’ which maintains the illusion of watching a movie play out in various frames. We find ourselves taking pictures of our battles often!

On to the main point of my letter however, which is the very concept of rules. I lurk various Warhammer related forums (as I’m sure you do) and am alarmed at the rigid, structured views my fellow gamers have of the 40k system. The squeaky wheel gets the grease as they so, so I write you this letter in hopes of granting you the other view; insight by a true basement gaming group. We are not the type to type long forum posts in argument over rules but we are the type that you find in the various background/fiction sections quietly discussing the background of the game. I believe we are the silent majority if you allow, I offer you the best gift any consumer can offer a corporation; a glance into what makes us tick. While rules are important, we view rules as a common tool to unite players, nothing more, nothing less. It is a language for us to meet new players, establish a rapport and possibly introduce them into our group. Once we know each other however, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, we could give a toss for the rules! Rules can be broken, changed and ignored for our enjoyment of the hobby. Designers certainly save us some time by giving us a structure (and 5th perhaps has the most clarity of any edition) but basement gamers don’t live by game designer whims. We modify your language, we add our own ‘slang’ to your language and we break it! That said, we do appreciate the underlying structure as most of us have day jobs, children and various other aspects of our life which demand our time.

However, those various pursuits are structured enough so we play the game to escape reality and share laughs. If we wanted a rigid, structured, balanced and tactical game there is always Checkers!

There is an entire aspect of the game, the creative nature, which seems to be escaping many whom play; Making a story. I don’t rightfully know why Games Workshop does not push this aspect of the hobby more (Although blank data sheets for Apocalypse is a very good sign) but I believe it’s important to stress. The new gamers, who are growing up with the hobby as all us vets once did, would benefit from this as would our gaming community as a whole. So what would I ask Games Workshop to do, if I happened to be on the design team? What do basement gamers crave? Well, outside of the outstanding miniatures (Which is without doubt the most important part of the hobby), we crave more tools to inspire our creativity. Apocalypse is an outstanding supplement and I believe a step in the right direction. As we are fathers, students, workers and husbands our time is very limited so any inspiration for creativity is well received. So give us more! Special character generators, crusade campaigns to play through, a system to link the various specialty games found in 40K, Universe maps as part of a campaign system, new vehicle design rules, etc. Give us more official ‘slang’ to communicate with our fellow gamers, further tools to immerse ourselves in the 40K world and we will continue to financially support your efforts (As we always have).

Ryan Geiler