Who Wants to Live Forever?

Picture this. You’ve just arrived at a friend’s place/gaming club/FLGS for a game of something, let’s call it Scufflemace 42k. After setting up terrain and such, you deploy your army, the centrepiece of which is an elaborate Skibidi Chudlord on Wyrmworm. It’s taken weeks of hobby time to carefully convert and paint this miniature. It’s your masterpiece—your magnum opus, your pride and joy—and before you even take a turn, an incredibly lucky series of rolls on your opponent’s part sees it blown to smithereens. You remove it from the table and pack it away, your motions stiff and mechanical, a lethargy spawned by deep depression. You haven’t got time in your busy schedule to play Scufflemace again for at least a month. A single tear glistens in the corner of your eye.

It happens to all of us sooner or later. For me it was the debut of my Chaos Knight Abominant, the first really big mini I’d ever painted. While it wasn’t taken down by a first turn alpha strike, it didn’t actually get to do anything before being destroyed by concentrated fire from my opponent. Perhaps ironically, I went on to win the game handily because he was so focused on my Knight that he overextended his forces, and the rest of my army cleaned up. It didn’t really matter though because I wanted to play with my shiny new toy, and I didn’t get to.