by Paul Feldman
In our last episode, I bought a box of Warhammer 40,000 (40k) miniatures to paint shortly after my son was born, to make up for the shitty job I did of painting Warhammer 40,000 miniatures as a youth. But there was a another reason. Something deeper than nostalgia. A primal drive, even. A drive that transcends Geekdom:
The drive to stay young, the desire to cheat death.
Was I, like Ponce De Leon before me, seeking the Fountain of Youth? Did I think I would find it in the perfumed air of the Glendale Galleria at the Games Workshop store? Possibly, considering I was two months into being a parent. I wouldn’t trade being a father for anything. It’s been one of the most mind-expanding, consciousness altering experiences of my life, and that includes all the time I spent on the chemical playground in my 20’s. Part of my new state of Dadhood was a new awareness of my own mortality, and a reassessment of my own childhood.
I began to ponder what it was about 40k that hooked me so hardcore to begin with. There’s the superficial: The cool miniatures and enthralling backstory. Even the fact that it was an English game lent it an enticing air of the exotic (English is exotic in Florida). But the map is not the territory. Something deeper within me must have been activated by Warhammer 40k for it to grab me as it did.
40k offered escapism, combined with a feeling of belonging. That’s an irresistible cocktail for an awkward middle school kid. I could always get lost in the pages of the rule book or White Dwarf magazine. Both were filled with the byzantine rules of combat in the 41st Millennium, but they also included short stories, invented factoids about the universe and countless tidbits of meaningless fluff that could occupy the young geekoid mind for hours. Combine that with a small, select circle of friends who you could share this arcane knowledge with and it was almost like belonging to a secret society, albeit the world’s weakest and least influential secret society. We all have our own versions of that first core group of fellow mutants.
I also mentioned in Part One that after I got to high school, my interests widened, and 40k’s presence in my life ebbed.
But, like a werewolf in sunlight, I still carried who I was under my skin. When I got to college, I browsed local game stores, just to check in on my tiny plastic comrades. Most of those stores also sold comics, which were what both the clerks and the majority of the clientele were more interested in. It wasn’t until I got to LA that I found the Promised Land.
Burbank might very well be the nerd capital of LA. Within its city limits are multiple hobby shops, model train stores, comic book shops and a store that specializes in Die Cast cars. And, once upon a time, a game shop called The Last Grenadier.
I first set foot in the Last Grenadier with my son when he was six months old. His may have been the first and only baby stroller to have ever crossed the store’s threshold.
The Last Grenadier was almost exclusively devoted to role-playing and tabletop war games. I say almost because they also had a small selection of military memorabilia (Including a full Luftwaffe officer’s uniform hanging from the ceiling). The floors were of unfinished concrete (not the hip kind you see in lofts. They just never put down any carpet). Dust bunnies lurked under the shelves. And lo, the shelves! Piled high with well-known and forgotten, current and out-of-print games. Sci-Fi, Historic, Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic. All of it. Weird card games, battered boxes of unpainted miniatures manufactured by firms that went under during the Carter administration.
Behind the glass counter, which contained gorgeously painted miniatures and various artifacts and treasures of Nerddom, were three clerks.
None of them looked at or spoke to me for the first fifteen minutes I was in the store. They were engaged in a heated argument.
An impassioned debate. About Warhammer 40k.
While the following is not a verbatim transcript, I believe it captures spirit of the moment:
“…of course the Imperium would order Exterminatus on a planet that had half a chapter of Space Marines on it. Life is worthless in 40k”
“Sure. But what about the loss of materiel from an Exterminatus strike? The whole point was to stop the orks from capturing that experimental ammunition”
“Exactly. Burn down the village to save it.”
To their credit, as soon as one of the guys spotted me, he came right over and asked if I needed help, made some polite conversation with me, and returned to his debate. Which is what I wanted. There is nothing quite like hearing Acolytes of the Faith debate the ephemera of the nonexistent.
I was among my people.
What sets stores like the Last Grenadier apart from cookie-cutter corporate outfits like Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast is that at the Grenadier you were welcome to bring your army down to play on game night and not buy anything. There was none of the hard sell atmosphere I felt in the mall. More than anything, you got the feeling that, while of course it was a business and existed to turn a profit, they cared about people getting together and playing games. Fellowship. Community. Heated discussions over the logistics of Imperial Stormtroopers making an appearance a 40k battlefield.
Then one day, The Last Grenadier was gone. A FOR LEASE sign affixed over the door, the space now just another vacant commercial space in the Los Angeles Sprawl. And while plenty of great similar independent shops remain, I was sad to see the Grenadier go. It wasn’t just nerdy, it had soul. The games, the miniatures, the dust bunnies and the arguments, even the Luftwaffe uniform (God Forgive Me)… it was a perfect concrete representation of the complexity of being a geek. I pour one out for my homies.
All of this was far from my mind as I sat at the kitchen table two years prior, continuing to paint my Space Marines. All the basic infantry guys were painted. Now it was on to the special weapons troopers and the Squad Sergeant. I started with the Flamer (it’s a flamethrower, but in 40k they call it a flamer). He wasn’t that much different than his comrades, aside from his weapon. However, one cool thing about the box set was that it came with a plastic template you could use to show the range of the tongue of fiery death produced by his weapon:
From my cold, dead, itty, bitty fingersNext up was the Rocket Launcher Trooper.
His backpack was fun to paintFinally, there was the Squad Sergeant, the first unhelmeted Marine I’d be painting. Some dudes with hardcore skills can actually paint the whites of the eyes, furrowed brows, whatever. I was pleased with myself just to keep the flesh colored paint mostly on his head:
With the completion of these three figures, the Space Marine Tactical Squad was ready to lob hot death at the enemies of the Imperium of Man. At this point, I may have played with them. MAYBE.
And still, my excitement did not abate. I decided I would next paint the squad of Marines in Terminator Armor: which are Space Marines in even more bad ass powered armor than usual. I had always wanted a squad of Terminators but had never been able to find one at the South Florida game shop. I was now entering the Undiscovered Country…
We’ll meet the Terminator Squad next, and pay a visit to the Old Geeks’ Home.
Metal Rules.
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