In the Evolution Gaming store in Eugene, there sits a glass shelf showcasing an art that is obscure for many. On the shelf sits two first-place trophies, won by Eugeneans for best painted and best objective in the 2009 U.S. National Tournament for Flames of War, a World War II board game.
“Nobody else has something that looks like this. If you can take a figure and make it look like nobody else’s, you are a rock star in this industry,” said community member and gamer Eric Smith.
Amid a store where shelves are stacked with boxes of games, colorful posters depicting super creatures and Styrofoam buildings, hobbyists like Smith escape to an imaginary world. On a Friday night, one can find a crowd of 15 surrounding several four by six tables where they spend hours rolling big handfuls of dice. Across the table, hundreds of figurines are poised to savagely tear the opponent to pieces.
Of the hundreds of board games in the shop, the most popular is Warhammer 40,000, a miniature game that has been around since 1987 and continues a Dungeons and Dragons-like legacy.
The game speaks of a time when mankind has fallen into a grim backward society, where humans have forgotten how to use technology and the seven-foot tall Space Marines are genetically bred for a 48,000-year-old emperor to help reunite humanity.
With 12 mighty armies, some with massive mallets, others with hefty firearms, the gamers use measuring tape and true line of sight to see if their weapons are in range of penetrating enemy armor.
“If you want to be successful at it, you have to understand tactics,” said Russ Henson, a Warhammer 40,000 player. “Every person has a certain individual style of playing. Gamers come in all shapes and sizes and psyches.”
While any game based on the roll of the dice has an element of luck, the gamers insisted a high level of skill is needed to win.
“Knowing your foe is part of the problem,” said store owner Fred Martinson, who explained that each of the wildly different armies has its own bulky rulebook. It is the player’s responsibility to understand and memorize the capabilities of the opponent. “There are rules for more things than there are models for,” Martinson said.
While the game takes about $150 to get started, rulebooks and tiny action figures range from $1 to $20, and gamers can easily spend $1,000 for a single complete army.
“People get sucked in because of the beautiful playing pieces,” Smith said. The miniatures, most just a square inch in size, are built from at least 10 interchangeable pieces that fit together onto a Styrofoam base.
After assembling the plastic and metal miniatures, gamers spend hours working under magnifying glasses with small paint brushes and countless shades of color to give their characters an original personality. Sometimes they spend 10 hours; sometimes they spend hundreds of hours on just a single piece.
While the miniatures are assembled models, the rivers, forests and realistic buildings that the characters inhabit and conquer are mostly handmade. A doormat cut into pieces can serve as a wheat field.
Henson, who has avidly played board games for most of his life, only started playing Warhammer 40,000 last year and has already collected 8,000 points of Space Marines.
“I’m terrible. Can you say obsessive?” he laughed. “Last year was not a good year for me. It was a good diversion for keeping my sanity,” Henson said.
University alumnus Morgan Natt even has a tattoo of the characters.
“It’s like playing with toys, but for a purpose,” Smith said.
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