In the deepest, darkest corners of wargaming, there exist horrors beyond human comprehension. There are sights that chill the blood, eldritch beings that defy all form of social convention, and halls of the damned which one can never truly leave.
Let’s talk about them!
As a note from the herder of cats, I’ll point out I gave everyone a rough brief which basically boiled down to “I’m not your mother, but try and make it look like *example*.” Because apparently this is also my own personal horror story, I ended up with a wide range of entries, some of which didn’t even come with attribution. If a subheading is unfunny, I did it. If you don’t see a name attached to a section, Gregbot did it.
The Player with Custom Models so Unspeakably Vile They Can’t Be Shown in Polite Company
Slinking around the edges of an otherwise ordinary event or game, this player has an otherwise normal-seeming list but harbors an intense, dark secret. Or rather, you and everyone else hopes it would just remain secret. But alas, it’s not until they begin unpacking their models that you recoil in horror – every single one of the models in their army has been either lovingly converted or sourced from a third-party caster. Of course, there’s no harm in that, you say – conversions are fine. But these are no normal models, no – a closer inspection reveals that every one of these models is festooned with a pair of massive, bare tits, each with its own comically oversized nipple. With growing disdain you realize that this is no fighting force arranged against you today but some sicko’s resin cast fetish, printed and painted and on full display in a public space.
The quality of the paint here doesn’t matter – they may be bug-eyed paint blobs or lovingly detailed parade pieces – but what does matter is that the whole thing makes your skin crawl. It’s embarrassing to see, and equally embarrassing to be seen playing against. It’s cringe. Figuratively and literally. Seeing these weird catgirl T’au with their exposed buttholes makes you physically cringe. You’re not one to kinkshame, but this shit sucks. The vibes are rancid, and now this weirdo expects you to play an entire game like nothing is wrong. Hell, they’re about to show you the models and tell you where they bought them. They’ve even given them all names.
If you’re lucky, the store manager will walk over and tell them to get the hell out. But if you were lucky, you wouldn’t be playing this guy to begin with.
The GW Game Narrator
Michael O “Mugginns”
You show up to your LGS or a casual event for a fun time after playing Warhammer of some variety for years and years. You pull out your lovingly painted army and throw down on the table, looking for a chill game with some strategy and epic moments. A stranger walks up to the table; you glance around in a moment of terror as you realize that all your normal gaming buddies are playing someone else right now. You agree to a 2,000 point game and start your turn.
“So that’s a 3+”.
“They move 6 inches.”
“You’re using a command point re-roll”.
“You need fives to hit”.
You’re just trying to play out your turn, the same stuff you’ve been doing for years, providing information when needed, and this guy is narrating your play like he’s a goddamn Twitch streamer. It’s not like you’re not providing enough information – this guy just needs to show everyone in the room how much of a command of the game he has. By the bottom of turn two you just want to lose as quickly as possible so you can be rid of this tryhard. Turn five ends and you shake hands, force a smile, and wish you had taken that job as the winter caretaker for that hotel out in Colorado.
Dr. Frankenstein’s Cousin Who Plays 40k
Consider, if you will, a game of Warhammer 40,000: Tenth Edition. You have gathered your army, driven it to an event, and been assigned your opponent for the next round. You begin the process of setting up the game but can’t shake the feeling that something is…off. Questions are being asked that you haven’t had to answer in decades. Words, phrases, and rules you’d thought long consigned to the dustbin of history now shamble across the table like so many reanimated corpses, clawing and tearing at your hard-won confidence that you had any idea what the hell was going on in this game.
Suddenly, the flash of recognition strikes. Arriving unbidden, it crushes any hopes you had of enjoying this game as surely as though they’d been struck with a sack containing the average number of rulebooks necessary to play a game in any prior edition. For you see, they are not playing Warhammer 40,000: Tenth Edition. No, they are playing something older, darker, more sinister. Something…that never actually existed anywhere outside of the deepest, most twisted recesses of their own demented mind.
They are playing Calvinhammer: 2012.
Their game is anything but simple: it is a depraved and debauched amalgamation of editions, stitched together without even a scintilla of the skill of a Drukhari Haemonculus, but with all of the little fiddly bits that make their profane creations an absolute nightmare to actually play on the table. The abomination so constructed is one worthy of Fabius Bile himself, and evokes the same disgust and revulsion in any poor soul left without an Exterminatus-level complement of virus bombs within easy reach.
In their efforts to draw you into their heinous trap, this vile sorcerer of the tabletop insists that the modern game you both signed up to play that weekend just isn’t as “fun” as the half-remembered specter of an unknowable long-dead edition, which raises the question of why they’ve bothered coming here in the first place and ruined each of their opponents’ games rather than hosting their own event with their friends that agree with them. The answer to that question may be too shocking to consider, and so we have not printed it here. It is instead left as an exercise to the reader, if any of you are brave enough to seek it.
Should you encounter such a being, your options are limited. Whatever you do, though, do not engage with their ludological necromancy—that way lies madness. Better to walk away with your sanity intact than expose yourself to whatever eldritch monstrosity they’ve conjured forth on the table before you.
The Rivet-Counter
Lenoon: T’is a dark and stormy morning, the morning of the annual club mega game. Many of you have been working for months on your models, assembling spreadsheets, marshaling paint queues, rushing hope against hope to complete just enough models in just enough time to re-fight the battle of Austerlitz. The armies assembled on the 12×4 board, the sherries were drunk to begin the battle and….
Darkness falls. The lights flicker. A chill wind blows. At the door, he appears, a shoebox under one arm, a curling sneer on his lips, what could be called a moustache in significantly worse light seeping across his upper lip. He has arrived.
The eye roves across the table, searching, questing, a little beady orb of insufferable evil. It alights upon a block of infantry, the Russian Grenadiers. “Wrong greatcoats for 1805.” You sigh – there’s ten other people there and no-one has an issue with the greatcoats. “WRONG GREATCOATS,” he says, louder, a little spittle forming at the edge of his mouth and cascading, slowly, down what was once a chin. “Take them off the board.” He moves on. “Hats,” he pronounces, clearly aroused, “These hats are wrong. Immersion broken! Ahistorical!” He reaches down and plucks at your models, moving them to the razor’s edge of the board.
Shriller and shriller, he proclaims, “Wrong green! Bardin regulation! Sabretaches weren’t issued for this regiment!” You protest, you all protest, that it’s fine, it’s a game, let’s get on with it, but he remains. No models are removed, the game continues, but for the next four hours you hear it with every bad roll….
“Incorrect uniforms so I get a reroll;” “of course, if the paint job was right I’d not call that cocked;” “you can’t even be bothered to get it right.” The voice is a drill in your ear, you spit metaphorical blood, you play and shake hands with this walking terror at the end, for one last gesture of sports-personship. Perturbed, you get the bus home. As you sit, you think, “I should have painted those buttons brass, not silver”
Oh god. It’s contagious…
The Curse of Bob Goonhammer
Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson: It’s a rare perfect weather day in Texas. Barely a cloud in the sky, a little breeze, and a high of 85 degrees. Practically jacket weather. You make the drive to go see a good friend at their home across town. You arrive after an uneventful drive, and knock on the door of your friend’s lovely house. Your friend greets you warmly and beckons you in. It’s been a few weeks since you last saw one another, and your friend offers you tasty drinks as you catch up. You both talk about work, life, and everything in between. You say hello to your friend’s family, all of them happy to see you. You and your friend banter with comfortable rhythm after years of knowing each other.
While you both chat, you meander into an unassuming room and open your bag. You’ve come to your friend’s house to play some Warhammer: 40,000, a hobby you both greatly enjoy. The moment your models touch the table, you are caught in the spider’s web.
Your friend isn’t just any regular tabletop enthusiast. Your friend is Robert “TheChirugeon” Jones. And he’s about to kick your ass.
Over the course of the next few hours, Rob systematically, painfully, and purposefully dumpsters you. Even Rob’s truly malignant dice luck cannot spare you from this wretched fate of getting dunked on. Your hair stands on edge as you realize you’ll barely score fifty points by the time the game ends. The walls erupt in dark, mocking laughter. Rob chants two words that haunt your nightmares. Soon, he is joined in the chanting by his young son. You’re pretty sure his wife would also join the chant, but she’s taking a nap.
“EGO DEATH! EGO DEATH! EGO DEATH!”
Your mind shatters, unable to process the unimaginable cosmic terror that your humiliating loss will be forever recorded in the annals of www.goonhammer.com. You are an insect before the maddening knowledge that the whole world knows that you are kinda bad at Warhammer. And that’s before he has his son come into the room and chant “EGO DEATH” at you over and over, all the while giggling with sadistic glee.
You recover – physically, at least – after what feels like an eternity. Rob asks if you’d like to stay for dinner, you happily agree. He’s a pretty good cook, it turns out. You chat some more over a beer, and then hit the road at an appropriate hour. As you drive away, with a smile and a wave, the Curse of Bob Goonhammer follows you. For, you see, the curse of Bob Goonhammer isn’t just getting repeatedly owned at a game by a good friend who happens to run a large blog about said game.
The real curse is that you always come back, doomed to publicly lose at Warhammer like a moth drawn to flame.
The Thief of Joy
Variance Hammer Eric: They who lurk in the dark corners of the store, waiting to try and drain you of any enthusiasm you have about a project. Ever mercurial, their opinion is always just that you shouldn’t be doing what you are. 28mm? It should be 15. D&D? Should have picked OSR. When left to their own devices, these enthusiasm vampires will leave you wondering why you talk about the hobby at all. Dogged in their pursuit of just being contrarian and impervious to reason, they have a weakness to “Neat. Anyway…” or being muted on Discord.
A Player Beyond Measure
Roxin: Perhaps you think you have entered a tournament, or have started a friendly pick-up game at your local store. But in reality you are in none of those places. No, despite your best intentions, you have opened the door and walked through into… The Twilight Zone.
It starts innocently enough. You notice that your opponent has, perhaps, been a little quick off the mark when moving their Bloodthirster (it’s always Khorne players for some reason). Was that really 12″? In the interest of fair-mindedness you give them the benefit of the doubt. Yet on your turn you find yourself subjected to the Eye of Sauron, interrogated every time you dare so much as twitch a model (‘I think that 10 degree pivot of your base means you should be subtracting 2″ from your move’). It isn’t long before you realise that you have slipped through the cracks of reality and stumbled into a non-euclidean nightmare, one where concepts like “distance” and “using a fucking tape measure properly” have no meaning.
By turn two your adversary (as you now increasingly think of them) has dropped all pretense and is scarcely waving the tape two feet above their models before scooping them up and practically hurling them forwards another 18″. Even when you finally break and ask them to re-measure (“actually, I’m not sure Juggernauts have a movement characteristic of three feet”) the being from outside geometry stares you dead in the eyes while nudging the unit back half an inch. Despite deploying on the back board their entire army has somehow hemmed you in 6″ away from your board edge and it’s not even turn three. Alarmed, you try and turn away to leave but three-dimensional space has no meaning, one step feels like a nanometre and the next is several miles, you try to look down but direction is lies, it’s all lies, somehow you are staring through your own chest back at the table which stretches forever and nowhere all in the same instant, The Adversary leering at you from within and without and always twirling, twirling….
The last thing you hear before you pass beyond the bounds of the universe is a distant voice saying ‘between Murderlust and pile-ins I can move my 160 Bloodletters into combat without charging, and also now I need to explain how my entire army has Fights-First’.
3025 Guy
Perigrin: Every time a BattleTech group is getting started, a campaign game is being played, or someone is looking the wrong way at a Clan Invasion starter, you can hear it. The dirge of madness pouring out of someone old enough to be the target audience of That 70s Show. A small, usually southern cry of “I used to love BattleTech before the Clans ruined it!”. These men (it is always men) are firmly of the belief that the brief 4 year span between TRO:3025 and TRO:3050 when they were thoroughly obsessed with robots was the only time in the last 40 years that BattleTech was good. They mistake the experience of growing older and slowly losing their interest and ability to play the fun robot game during the rat race of the post-cold war world with the game having grown significantly shittier. They are a pitiable creature more than a frightening one, as they really can’t help it. They know they are less happy, and that the robot game doesn’t hit the same as it did when they were in college. They just don’t understand that they miss the people, the atmosphere, and the places they played it in. They associate happy memories of what was, to them, a better time, with this robot game being a very particular thing, and the fact that it rapidly changed around the time that they got married, lost their time to children, lost their spines, their identities, everything that made them cool, is just unacceptable.
(In a way, maybe it was a better time. I never lived it, and grew up in a world where I knew what a Mad Cat was before I could read (thanks MechAssault for ruining me forever), but I have seen the way that they yearn, eyes full of a deep and blackened sorrow as they slowly shrivel into their trucker hats and “I Farted” skeleton tee-shirts. Something was different for them, but it wasn’t the robot game. My father has repeatedly said that he didn’t know how good he had it in the 90s, and maybe these men feel the same way about the 80s and just can’t let go of how those books and this game made them feel.)
They are a universal concept, possibly all outgrowings of the same short old man, like a many-headed manifestation of a creeping god-fungus growing on the brain of reality and scratching at it like nails. You see them at every store, at every club, anywhere the game is being played. I have encounters with them every couple months, they see an Adder or a Turkina on the table and slowly approach, testing the waters before launching into a tirade about the game having sucked when the Clans came out. There are legitimate reasons to dislike the Clans. The weird sci-fi culture that is fundamentally built on Eugenics and violence, the ridiculous outfits, the caste system. But they don’t mention that. It is always just “They don’t feel like BattleTech”. The version of the game that existed in their heads from the years 1991-2021 was a pure and untouched bit of military sci fi flavored with knights that was spoiled by the Solaris Expansion and those damn furries and their newfangled rules changes. “Newfangled Rules Changes” that are older than I am. The game was dead to them, they were mostly raising children (poorly) or working, and now that they have more time and are returning it has to be the exact same, the Clans are still brand new, and nothing has happened to change that. They poison the minds of new players with their lies and promises of a better game, and can in the worst cases self replicate and create an all new generation of bitter old men, just with a bit of a head start.
If they had to acknowledge that things are just different than they were then, they would have to acknowledge that they are older, and that they might not be happy with the path their lives took. Maybe they were pressured into a career path they hated, an identity they despised, a role they weren’t ready for. That is why BattleTech sucked for them when the Clans came out, and why they stopped playing it. They were busy pretending to be adults instead of happy, robot loving teenagers. Fortunately some can be rehabilitated and reintroduced to the wild BattleTech population with enough time, a few games, and a bit of BV, but for others they will just wander from store to store spitefully looking down their noses at the various Ghost Bears and Irate Pine Martens that are painted up on tables, refusing to dust off the dusty plastic bin full of shitty old Metals, and telling rambling stories about 13 hour long games and not realizing that the game didn’t take that long to play, they were just distracted trying to see if Harold could balance more beer cans on his head. You worry that you’re going to join them, but at least you are (I am) too gay to be complaining about your wife not wanting you to go out to play games. You have zero clue why it seems like every old BattleTech player has an unhappy marriage and you can’t really think of anything particularly funny to say about it. You do feel it creeping in though, the bitter old man disease. You fear that someday you’ll be complaining that BattleTech was great until the Kuritan Ilkhan or something equally arbitrary. It comes for us all at some point.
The Solaris rules do suck ass though, they are right about that one. Genuinely dogshit supplement to actually try and play.
You
Greg: You, personally, the individual reading this right now, are my least favorite haemonculus to interact with at the gaming store. No one else who clicks on this article is going to see this paragraph. I have configured the website, at great effort and expense, to only show it on your specific phone and laptop. If you tell anyone what you saw they won’t believe you, and I will deny having written it. Why are you – again I mean you in particular, not the general “you” – the absolute worst? You know what you did on that day. You know what you did. My only hope in this world is that I live to see you get what you deserve. Don’t ever show your face around here again, if you know what’s good for you.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
