Battlefield Orange
It was all out war at the Orange City Bowling Club on the weekend with 38 competitors from across the state taking part in two-days of simulated science fiction warfare.
Warhammer 40,000 is a science fiction tabletop strategy game that uses miniatures, model vehicles and terrain to simulate the battlefield of a dystopian, distant future. Played on a 4 x 6-foot table, players act as generals guiding their own carefully selected armies into battle against their opponents.
“It's kind of like chess, in a way, because you are moving figures on a board and they can only move in certain ways,” said Brian Johnstone, the organiser of the weekends Battle in the Bush tournament and an enthusiastic player for the past 20 years.
Rather than being locked to a grid, Warhammer 40,000 players use rulers and tape measures to move pieces allotted distances. Attack and defence is decided by dice rolls, simulating random chance in the chaos of war.
“There can be a lot of swearing when the dice don't go your way!” said Brian, “But you have to accept the fact that things don't always go your way don't complain too hard when you roll ones when you needed twos… if you have a good two-and-a-half hours to put aside it is a lot of fun!”
The dice certainly rolled the wrong way for Jeremy Brodie, who travelled with his brother from Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands for the tournament — his first in Orange. In his opening match on Saturday, he lost eleven 50-50 dice rolls and any chance of salvaging a first-round victory.
“There is a huge amount of skill in the game, but at the end of the day because it is a dice game the luck factor can be huge. Over the years, the amount of crazy dice rolls I've seen… it doesn't even surprise me anymore. There’s nothing you can do about that… it is just the way it goes.”
At just 23 years of age, Jeremy has been playing for 16 years, amassing an impressively large collection of miniatures and travelling to tournaments across Australia.
“We were planning to go to Adelaide this weekend, but with COVID restrictions we could go so we came here instead,” he said.
“But we've been everywhere, all over NSW, Josh my brother has been to Queensland, we've been to Victoria, we’ll travel everywhere… you have to to go to the big tournaments, so you can't complain.”
While winning games is obviously nice, Jeremy said it is more the social side of things that draws him to tournaments.
“Comps, the atmosphere is very different because you get so many different people from so many different areas. You meet new people, you get new ideas on armies that other people have... it is just a great atmosphere really, because you have so many different people all uniting over the one thing,” said Jeremy.
When not actually playing or delving into the many complex rulebooks, participants spend time on the other side of the hobby, which constructing hand painting the miniatures and models so they can be used in the game.
Painting miniatures is an artform in itself and there are players who take pride in rendering extreme details on their figure. Then there are others, for whom it is a necessary chore to get a new unit or character on the table.
“I'm more so into the playing side,” said Jeremy. Most of the time I don't have the patience… I do paint my own models, but as long as they're painted, I'm happy. I don't go too crazy with all that.”
Along with prizes for winning battle, tournaments also reward the best painted armies, recognising those who do put a lot of time into model work.
“The games look better when everything is fully painted,” said Brian, who admits he prefers the game play to painting.
“I love playing, but due to life I do spend more time building and painting, that’s the way it is.”
Brian is part of a local group of Warhammer 40,000 players who meet up for games and a social get-together.
“It’s called Friday Night Gaming, we have a meet up once a month and we try to keep it consistent throughout the year. I’ve always been on committee, but I've only just sort of stepped up to running my own events in the last year or two,” he said.
This tournament was set to run last year, but like too many things COVID intervened.
“We had sold out a 60-player event in three days, but then we had to cancel because everything shut down,” he said.
“Today is not as big as we wanted but despite how hard it has been, we have 38 players all here, all ready to play. When we started, we had 16 players at our first Battle in the Bush . We've grown now to the size where we can sell out a tournament in three days! So it is challenging, but rewarding.”
Brian said anyone interested in the hobby, should join their ‘Friday Night Gaming Community’ group on Facebook.
“Out meets are advertised on the page and anyone can come along and have a look, you can ask questions on Facebook or in person and we will all happily talk about it, we can offer tips for painting if that's what you want or tips for the game or just general questions.”