"What is 40k to You?" - Ron Saikowski

Ron over at FTW recently posted THIS blog entry. It is Ron's version of where he "stacks up" in this hobby, and is based on an article Jervis Johnson wrote in White Dwarf #354 (US).

I found this post rather intriguing, and decided it would be interesting for me to sit down and think about where I "stack up" in this tabletop miniature wargames hobby of ours. Plus, I'm not too shabby with spreadsheets and making 3-D pie charts, so bonus for me.

Problem is, when I finally sat down to map-out my 40k hobby, I realized it wasn't so easy.

My first thought was, "I'm mostly into this game for the playing aspect and the 'hanging out with friends' part of it." So I slapped a 66% into the 'gaming' item and a 20% in the 'camaraderie' item.

Hmmm... Doesn't leave too much space for all the other aspects of the hobby. So before moving on, I dropped the 'gaming' down to 50%.

Still, 30% for modeling/painting and collecting and background?

I'm not a huge fan of the painting side of things, but it IS fun. I do love me some fluff. And to a certain extent, I do enjoy the collecting side of things a bit, but I'm not the type that just must absolutely have at least one full-sized squad of every choice in a codex (although I do believe I have hit that mark with my Eldar collection...).

Still, 30% combined for modeling/painting and collecting and background?

So I had to scale back again. Thinking about it some more, long and hard, I realized I *mostly* like this hobby for the playing and camaraderie parts, but do really enjoy the other elements more than I initially thought. In fact, I'd go so far as to say *almost* as much as the gaming/chumming parts.

So in the end, I scaled the playing and camaraderie parts back to 55% combined, and doled out the other 45% to the other 3 parts in equal measure.

Imagine that. My first hunch was that I predominantly liked the playing/hanging-out parts, but when I put some numbers to it, I actually realized that I like the parts of the hobby that one (generally) does alone more than I realized.

Ron (and Jervis), nice exercise in making me truly think about where I "stack up" in this hobby.

So, as Ron put it, "What is 40k to You"?

40k to me is: