Reading through some of my own older posts after more or less forgetting about 40k as a hobby for 4 years. What a trip. I was right sometimes and wrong sometimes as well. I wonder if this is how every commentator feels when they write their memoires? Except we aren't done yet. Oh no.

I really want to write a big post about the problems with 40k. I want to write this post because the game is a lot of fun but has it's fair share of issues and I would summarise them as thus:

1. Community. Head and shoulders above all other problems this game has is the community. 4 years ago I wrote about being excited to be in a new country and experience a new community to play in but instead it slowly sapped my enthusiasm. The community itself is this games own worst enemy and this topic is totally worth its own complete blog post.

2. The company. GW gets eaten alive everywhere it is mentioned, but to date YTTH still did it best pointing out the arrogance and hubris of the management in this business. His own status as an (ex-)investor gave him a particular degree of insight in to a company he bought many thousands of dollars of products from and these managers in the end discredited themselves and disgusted Stelek so much he sold off his shares and threw in the towel on the company completely. This is a very damning thing for GW, a popular internet personality refusing to be browbeaten by threats and then pointing out a total loss of confidence in your sustainability does say many bad things.

3. The models. The game does have some of the best models on the market. Their production quality is very high and it's obvious great lengths were crossed to make them among the very best given the subject matter. Unfortunately they're very small and kind of unimpressive to outsiders. People walk in to the store, see what are essentially fancy chess pieces and then walk back out. This is neither a commendation nor a condemnation of the artistic direction for the pieces, I just feel the models themselves are kind of sold short by being flimsy and hiding the quality of their production via the extremely small scale. Objects observed from a distance lose more detail than lower quality ones viewed slightly too close.

4. The art direction. I bring all non-physical game products together under this banner. I expressed elsewhere disappointment at certain things in this fictional setting and I think they bare repeating here. 40k is numbing. It has too much gore and violence happening far too much. Picking up the harlequin codex and expecting to read some extracts of ancient (2nd and 3rd edition) material to provide some background and context to this army instead produced a non-stop series of "we found bad guys doing this, so we bust outta nowhere and wrecked their shit in ways that make us practically indistinguishable from the settings villains". The harlequins faction went from being silent achievers and a society of concerned patrons of goodness to be being another faux-noble collection of disgusting and sadistic sociopaths. This is the art direction of 40k in a nutshell. Everything unique and beautiful gets boiled down in to a 2 dimenional or even 1 dimensional parody of its own earlier incarnation. Harlequins serve a god who transmits his message to those who matter through the medium of art and dance. They work to limit the power of chaos and cut the chords slaanesh has over the eldar race. In modern interpretations they do this through practically invoking demonic energies themselves and committing heinous violence while driving divisive wedges between members of their own race and own faction. The same theme now runs with CraftWorldEldar too. They've gotten more violent, more accessible and suffer more infighting than before. They're no longer surreal astral ancients shrouded in legacy and mysticism, they've been stylistically degraded in to homocidal lunatics engaging in dangerously irresponsible practices justified by weak allusions to higher authority (their gods are dead).  See: wraithknights, wraithguard, Codex Iyandan, hemlock wraithfighters as just some basic examples. See also Necrons as the worst offender. They're unrecognisable in their current fluff direction.

5. Non-tabletop incarnations. This is the last pain point of 40k and GW. The lack of quality control on the digital versions of their games is inexcusable from the damage to their reputation it engenders. Giving out their licence to seemingly anyone no matter how disingenuous they are does not foster good PR. Dawn of War 1 still gets mods and mod updates. If GW had the brainpower to say that they want a game roughly analogous to their main product line as a vessel by which to sell more plastic crack then another *decent* DOW is the answer. We've been calling for it but haven't seen anything. The stupid lane defence model of DOW2 should never be repeated either and certainly not streamlined any further as it degraded the experience that a strategy game should be offering. People aren't scared of complexity, the kind of player who is scared of complexity in their strategy game sure as fuck isn't going to be a client of the tabletop game (with its 200 page rulebook). If you want players to buy your products with both hands then try putting food in both hands instead of leaving one empty or callously filling it with sand and broken glass.