Time for a bit of thinking out loud.
The Chonky Bois are my first foray into anything GW. I've played around with Malifaux, Kings of War, Wrath of Kings, Warmahordes, and Infinity; but I avoided GW largely because they seemed to spend a decade or so being complete shits to their base. And as a result, not many people locally were playing their games. Additionally, I'm not a huge fan of the whole Grimdark aesthetic, nor did I care for the game style of the Olde World of WFB. I simply had (and have!) no time for trays of rank and file.
So, what's changed? Well... quite a bit. First, GW seems to be being better to their people. The culture of the company is changing. I also enjoyed their statement on tolerance published earlier this year. There was way too much cock in GW. They seem to be actively encouraging their base to put biases aside and create a safe place to play their games.
Added to this are recent attempts to diversify the models and not just have hyped up white males and girls in chainmail bikinis. I say attempts, because even some of their recent models are a bit of a head scratcher; but I feel the need to give them an 'atta boy!' on this rather than be too critical. I want this trend to continue in all parts of the gaming hobbies.
Additionally, I have to say that I really like parts of the aesthetic of Age of Sigmar. The Kharadron Overlords in particular, as this blog will attest, are a faction I can get behind. I don't particularly like KO lore, such as is—it literally makes no sense from a sociological perspective. I intend to change that a bit for my Bois here. But, I picked up the Start Collecting box largely based on the look of the models.
And then once I bought a box or so of the stuff I can see why people put up with the abuse from GW for so many years. The models are stunning: logical in how they build up; beauties to paint. I am borderline astounded how good they look with a few simple painting tricks and completely understand why the competitive painting circuit seems to gravitate towards GW for their bread-and-butter. Part of me wonders why it took me so long! But of course that came down to no one playing locally.
Which brings us to the last big change: players. A few friends during the tumult of 2020 have challenged me to build an army in the hopes that we can one day battle in-person. The one is quite keen and has actually finished a 2k army of StDs and is starting in on Gloomspite Gitz. The other friend has eschewed all decency and is building an entirely custom army of Fyreslayers—with custom weapons that we'll collectively have to design mechanics around. Indeed, we might wind up running One Page Rules rather than the actual Age of Sigmar given these issues. Custom work all around!
That last bit got me thinking of the sociological problems in KO lore and how to fix it with my Chonky Bois. I've been reading a lot of Death of a Rubricist, specifically their custom world building ideas. My hope is to do some of that here in this space coming up with some custom lore for my bois that makes more sense of how people actually act. That custom lore, along with pretty pictures, is what you'll see a lot of here in the future.
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