On wargamer generosity

It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst wargamers that a backlog is inevitable. Things get bought on impulse or you get something to expand an army before moving off in a different direction or even on to another army. Thus we wargamers usually have a few (okay, a lot of) useless models lying around waiting for the day we "get around" to them.

There is an alternative, of course: make the backlog somebody else's problem. So it was that I was at a barbecue on Saturday, telling my friend Dave I was considering resurrecting my Ork army for 7^th ed. "Considering", mind you! Half an hour later he presents me with a cardboard box containing about 30 Boyz, 5 Nobz, 4 Burna Boyz and their mandatory Mek, a converted Warboss, a very dusty Trukk, a very lonely Bomb Squig and that really cool Space Marine Terminator Chaplain (I checked, he did want to give me that). Surprised, I remembered that he's planning an Imperial Guard detachment for his Dark Angels and offered to hunt up some Cadian Shock Troops I bought for my Lost And The Damned and never built.

I don't know if it's just my immediate circle of wargaming friends that are this generous but this isn't a rare scenario. Payment isn't even always necessary. Back in January my friend and eternal rival Matt fell in love with the new Dwarfs and decided to start an army. I reminded him I had some Dwarfs I hadn't used in years and said he was welcome to them.

"Some", incidentally, was the better part of a hundred. Aside from a few character models I was fond of I handed him a complete army. Financially speaking I probably did myself out of two or three hundred quid there.

It all comes around, though, and that's the thing, I'm sure some day Matt will end up putting something he finds useless my way. Quite besides which those hundred Dwarfs were doing me no good where they were: in a shoe box, under my bed just waiting for a family of spiders to see its real estate potential. I hadn't used the army for the better part of six years and even then I played maybe half a dozen games before realising that a slow-moving missile-heavy army wasn't to my taste. It felt like a change of pace when I bought it but it just didn't suit me.

(This isn't me saying Dwarfs are poorly designed just that the style doesn't suit bloodthirsty, combat-lovin' me.)

So, yes, now I suppose I'm committed to an Ork army.