Lexington 
It’s funny to think that I didn’t even much like Warzone at first.
To set the scene a little, it’s somewhere deep in the latter half of the 90’s. I am a teenager living in Texas’ sweltering Gulf Coast, and like many young men of a particular disposition, my brain has been thoroughly colonized by a force known as “Warhammer 40,000.” It’s all I want to think about, and any ideas about games, miniatures, life choices, etc. that don’t involve Orks or Space Marines seem like they are missing the point of life. Which, just so we’re all clear, here, is Orks and Space Marines.
So, when Scott calls and says he has a new and distinctly non-40K minis game to try out, the record scratch is almost audible. Scott and I have been friends since grade school. Lately, he’s my primary partner in 40K shenanigans, and we’ve spent a year or so playing with miniatures, reading White Dwarfs and swearing in what we probably think of as a creative manner. Sirens start flashing internally at the prospect that these times have now come to a sudden stop.
I’ve already spent a bunch on 40K stuff, I say. Summer lawn mowing money only stretches so far, you know? It’s true, of course, but it’s also a dodge. I don’t want my friend to abandon the grim darkness of the far etc. It’s where I live now.
The gambit doesn’t work, though. This game’s cheap, he tells me, and we can just use 40K minis as proxies for the time being. He has a rulebook, and it’s the coolest thing he may have ever seen and we can get a game in right now if I come over. I’m still hesitant, but who knows – maybe he’s stumbled on something that’s even better than 40K? The possibility seems remote, but what the hell. Might as well try and wrangle with this strange new beast. I hop on my trusty five-speed and ride off to Scott’s place.
I later immortalized Scott in a mildly popular webcomic, a fact that I doubt he’s ever fully forgiven me for. And, yes, he did actually do this once.
It’d be great to be able to look back and say that this was a turning point, that a taste of Warzone’s fresh mechanics and bonkers art direction freed me from 40K’s iron grip and opened my young eyes to the possibilities that lay beyond. Perfect little arc there, right? Call to action, resistance, adventure, acceptance. Dan Harmon, eat your heart out.
Too bad that’s not what happens.
It’s not that Warzone doesn’t leave an impression or anything. There’s a lot going on, after all. Alternating activations! An Action Point system! Beasties that looked like they wriggled out from the crawl space under DOOM’s house! Paul friggin’ Bonner! Despite all that, and the tantalyzing possibility of introducing even more chainswords into my lifestyle, the game just doesn’t stick. I bounce off each faction for one reason or another, army building feels like algebra homework and the setting itself lacks a particular Games Workshopian je ne sais quoi that’ll end up transforming 40K in to a billion-dollar enterprise twenty-five-ish years down the line. Scott definitely gets hooked, and it ends up on a regular enough rotation*, but the Imperium of Mankind remains my heart’s sole allegiance.
Things get fuzzy after that. Did I play even a single game of 2nd Edition? Maybe. The big box, bursting with plastic miniatures, was definitely a known quantity, Scott becoming nearly evangelical about the terrain rules around buildings. My family picks up and moves back to our native Michigan not too long afterwards, though, so the point is moot. I do run into the setting’s post-Target incarnations at various points**, but it mostly fades into memory as time continues its relentless and well-documented march onwards.
Suddenly, it’s 2023. 40K’s something that’s primarily in my rearview mirror, I’m at Adepticon for other things, and there’s a Warzone booth with none other than Bryan C.P. Steele sitting on the other side. Steele’s a guy I’ve known since the earliest days of WARMACHINE, and his narrative work on the original Prime still holds a top spot in my personal pantheon. I’d followed Eternal’s ill-fated first Kickstarter and had positive memories of the rules, so a demo seemed like the thing to do.
The Warzone Booth, Adepticon 2023, photos brazenly stolen from Res Nova’s Twitter because forgetting to take pictures at opportune moments might well be my life’s true calling.
It’s good! It’s real good. So good, in fact, that I get two or three of them in. And those new minis, the single-pose ones they’re doing in lieu of the…sometimes questionable dual-builds from the original Kickstarter? They’re hitting their marks across the board. Plus, that Razide is still golden. I leave the con composing a mental note to keep on top of this one.
The big test happens upon arriving home. My old Warzone rulebook, the original one with binding that’s long since rotted away, comes out for a spin. See, game rules come and go, but as you might’ve gleaned from the above, it’s settings and stories and ideas that really capture me. And, boy, am I ever captured. It clicks. I get it now. The fusion of noir and sci-fi and that deeply pulpy feel, all of it crammed together in a superposition between serious drama and deep, succulent irony. You could set a book here and never have it feel too ridiculous, but at the same time, there’s a Muawijhe guy who could be best described as “Gunhands Speakerface.”*** What’s not to love?
So I’m in. Obviously, really, because you’re reading this, right? Right. The revised Kickstarter opens and hits every single one of its stretch goals. Over on the Discord – which you should really be on, there’s a link right up there in the sidebar – we start up a weekly voice chat, and a gaggle of regulars starts to show up on Mondays, 8pm CST (hint, hint, people – Ed.), and we decide that a group blog is the answer to a question’s no one asked, but really should have. That’s my story, but also the story of ++Chronicles Eternal++. I’m excited to see where it goes next. Hope you’ll come along for the ride.
…oh, and next time? I’ll just listen to Scott.
My original book in its classy re-binding. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Thank goodness.
* I still wake up with the night shivers re-living those times I ended up on the business end of Alakhai the Cunning. If there is a True Name to pain written in the base code of the universe, it is “Meat Wolfer.”
** Including a couple of friends who cast for Excelsior during its turn at the wheel. They are from Philly, they are filthy, and one of them was in my wedding party. Should’ve known I was already doomed.
*** The Doomsday Proclaimer, available for weddings, birthday parties and Valentine’s Day Massacres.
