Our favourite shared activity right now is playing Warhammer 40,000 – or at least a version of it that he's comfortable with. Taking boards and armies to the leisure centre wasn't really practical, so I grabbed a container from the kitchen and put into it two of my Salamander Space Marines, two of his 'Noisy Gitz' ork warband, a little bag of dice and a 40k ruler. I figured it was worth a try.
Thankfully it worked pretty well. The game only lasted maybe ten minutes, but we used the container and lid as obstacles and a spare dice as an objective. My marines got wiped out by my trigger-happy opponent and we had a lot of fun before the swimming lesson, meaning he went into his lesson with a grin.
It got me thinking, with the variety of awesome sets Games Workshop is releasing lately in a range of sizes (I'm looking at you, Conquest, First Strike, Nightvault et al), there may be room for another type of set. They are doing a great job of getting new players into the hobby (and old players returning to it), so I'd say there's definitely a market.
The set I would propose is a 'duellist' set, containing two or four miniatures, an objective marker and a compact rule booklet that also contains data cards for the miniatures and a couple of scenarios to play through. The packaging, or inner tray, could have scenery printed on it like in First Strike, Know No Fear and the like. I think it'd be a great little taster set for those looking for a gateway into the hobby and also something cool for existing players to collect if the minis and objective were exclusive to it. It seems like a fun idea.
Yeah, I'm writing a fair bit about Warhammer stuff of late, but it has made a huge difference to my family life and it's so exciting to be so deep into it again. This is so much fun it's unreal, and I'm loving sharing my enthusiasm for it! Give it a go.
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