How green was your cactus?

Forgive the obscure radio serial reference, I guess listening to the Goon Show’s got me in a radio kind of mood. The question I’m basically asking it, how much imagination do you invest into your models? Are you strictly a wargamer, where each model is nothing more than a tool, or do you let your inner roleplayer seep into your Warmachine/Hordes experience?

Myself, I spent many years in my wayward youth with an assortment of RPGs, ranging from the standards to the more uncommon (seriously, track down a copy of Hunter Planet for goofy one-off’s), and I’ve always maintained that the best games produced by GW (back when I played GW games) were the ones that had roleplaying elements – campaign systems, experience levels for individual models, etc. Oh, how I’d wet my pants if Privateer came out with a character/squad-based IK game…

Part of what made the WarmaHordes Challenge fun for me was writing up the backstory as the list was built. The general antipathy between Severius’ and Feora’s troop units, the Seneschal Tobias’ devotion, the Vassal’s weary acceptance of his lot in life – while these may not have been fully fleshed out in the writeups, they developed in my head. That helped steer the reports as I wrote them up, right down to Holt’s exasperation as Aiyana threw herself at Morvahnna.

This enriches my Warmachine experience, as it becomes just as much a game of storytelling as it is a game of little toy soldiers carving up the Iron Kingdoms.

It all started when I painted up my first gunbunnies for my Searforge list. Thumper was first, Gorten’s personal gunbunny, and the twins Flopsy and Mopsy weren’t far behind. The Driller, too, was named, and despite having her arms blown off before reaching melee in each of my first five games with her, Jennifer remains near and dear to my heart.

Then there’s Ingrid.

She's very pretty, orright??

Pokey Smurf was my first Bokur, and is typically found attached to Gorten. He’s just as capable of wreaking havoc as Ingrid is, and in fact has more heads on his metaphorical belt (including that dodgy ninja wench Rhyas), but it’s Ingrid that strikes fear into the hearts of my opponents, evincing statements like “Oh crap, he’s using Ingrid” and in some cases actually impacting their setup as they try to avoid her (thus giving Pokey or my third bokur, Marley, new opportunities).

Is it because she’s converted? No. Is it because she’s appeared in No Quarter? No. It’s because she’s developed a personality through the assurance that she is, in fact, very pretty. Even the most battle-hardened warcasters are loathe to tell her otherwise.

This has no impact in terms of rules whatsoever, but it makes games that much more fun… and you know what? There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t tap into this font of amusement.

Helo Pinheiro was 15 when she inspired "The Girl from Ipanema"

Start with naming. You’ve invested hours of your time assembling and painting the models, sitting hunched over that Argus while you tried to get its teeth painted just so.Do the heads get along? Is one dominant? Does each have its own identity, or are they a single gestalt mind housed in separate craniums? Does one prefer the taste of fresh-killed Menite while the other prefers woodland mammalia? When it doppler-barks, is it howling out the X-Files theme or The Girl From Ipanema?

You don’t have to go into a lot of background detail for your models to get enjoyment out of them – Ingrid’s personality, as I said, developed purely out of her thinking that she’s really very pretty. Other than her attachment to Thor Steinhammer, I haven’t fleshed out any more background for her at this stage, but she’s immensely fun to play with based on that alone.

Go on. Name that Defiler. Name that Strider Deathstalker. Name that Sunburst, that Titan Gladiator, those three Stormsmiths. It’ll not only give you a handy referential when playing (“Urkle spews acid” sounds much cooler than “Slag Troll #3 spews acid”), but you never know just what will develop.

It’s a game. Have fun with it.