Why I "Powergame", an Introduction

First off allow me to introduce myself; I am known as Meister_Kai across the internet in various places and my real name I will not say just because I like making things that much harder for the identity thieves out there. I aspire to become a social studies educator while attending Ball State University which is located in Indiana. My friends tell me in their nasally northern-Indiana accents that I have a very hick southern-Indiana accent and thus I hate the sound of my own voice, too bad I am very talkative and opinionated.

Intro's aside, I would like to base my first ever blog post around something very near and dear to my heart, why people play games the way they do. This has a lot to do with how people define hilariously non-definable things like "fun" and the "spirit of the game" so I won't touch on that, only with what concerns myself.

So lets get to business.



When I was a little tyke, all the men on my dad's side of the family would get together every summer and play a large game of Monopoly. Seeing them drink and be marry while they throw around fake money was entertaining, but watching my dad (who had the unfair advantage of being an actual realtor lol) trounce everyone every time caused me to ask myself an important question: How could he win so decidedly every game, yet still allow for himself and everyone involved to have plenty of good natured fun (the games never got violent, or rowdy, but were very competitive). Being a kid at the time I didn't understand how someone could be ok with losing, but I would learn this in time.

Flash forward X amount of years. I am in middle school and the "Odyssey" expansion had just came out for MTG. As all Magic players do I had a friend that possessed a "Sliver deck". A Sliver deck is usually a hodge-podge of bad cards that noobs think is the most overpowered thing ever. The "footdar" of Magic if you will. So while this pile of dooky was beating in the faces of everyone around him, I was noticing a trend: everyone had bad manabases. I won't get into what that means, but know that I soon purchased a $40 deck designed from the ground up to beat up on bad manabases. Thus, I started winning a lot and thus people abandoned their bad decks by and large for more well-oiled machines. I have never enjoyed beating on "baby seals" as Stelek always says, nor have I ever been much of a politically-inclined person as the "oh I don't really wan't to attack you but you know I have to blah blah blah bad excuse blah" exercise that is MTG multiplayer bored me to tears.

I guess this is a good time to state that Magic is where I developed most, if not all the traits that seep into my 40K philosophy. For instance, I don't care whether or not you play a deck you built yourself or one you got from the internet. I just don't. I care much more about how the person playing it utilizes the deck (or list in 40K) than where the list came from. All I care about is the competition; if I club a baby seal so to say, I don't have fun. Its boring, and if I do it too hard the other person usually ends up learning nothing. If someone walks in and just blows me away like I was nothing, I will continue to hawk this person for games until I can beat him/her (ok who are we kidding, him) regularly. This isn't out of some form of spite or malice, I just enjoy losing in a hard fought battle much more than just steamrolling some guy. Of course, the greatest thrill would be me beating Kirby or Stelek in a game of 40k, but even if I lost I would be all jokes and giggles up until the last plastic man was taken off the table. Then we would go out for a beer lol.

Skip forward even more years. 40K comes to my town and I want to play Death Korp of Krieg Guard (I love German stuff) and thus can't play 40K as I don't have the money for that kind of stuff being almost a college freshmen. I never was one for much science fiction (so most Xeno's besides Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Tyranids were out) and I think playing as the "humans" in sci-fi games beats the point of playing a sci-fi game so Space Marines are out. Sort of contradictory I know, but meh.

Even MOAR years in the future my good friend who shall not be named convinces me to start up 40K as many of my bought-for-10 cents-now-worth-$12-a-piece Magic cards have finally matured to the point where I could sell a quarter of my collection and easily buy a 40K army (yes even forge world).

Well, here (really) begins how this all ties into my greater philosophy, 40K, and how it all ties together. Sorry, won't be going into that right now, I had to lay the ground work so you could all see where I will be coming from with my second article tomorrow, followed by hopefully a battle report sometime after this weekend. Also I just dig blue-ballsing like that, ending every post like its an old Dragonball Z episode.

So, this being my first post go ahead and criticize very harshly and tell me what I could do different/better. I'll get to the second part sometime tomorrow!