Edit: Big hat tip to Blue Table Painting. I cite them frequently as examples of social media marketing done totally right. However, this article is about Shawn’s comments on powergaming and sums up everything right and wrong with wargames.

This is easily the single best and most informative video I’ve ever seen about list building in Warhammer 40k. I also think that the video represents everything that is completely wrong with 40k.
I love Shawn Gately & Blue Table Painting and I seriously think that most people don’t realize what an incredible contribution that he is making to the wargames industry as a whole and the hobby in general. Seriously, he gets kanban and I really respect the heck out of that as well as what he does for his community, both local and internet. 

However the video does get to the point of what all games of 40k devolve into. I use the word devolve deliberately. 40k quickly quits (for me and frankly a large number of my customers when I worked for GW) being about the fun of playing the game for the games sake and quickly turns into a numbers driven churn of minmaxing to come out with a “perfect” list.

I honestly rarely saw or see two people who just tossed out a generic model list and played for the fun of it. There is always someone crunching the numbers of their list to give them an edge.This is totally natural with any game but there is something about 40k and GW games in general that really encourages this.

I do know people that do this with Flames of War to a certain extent as well as WMH but those games don’t suffer from the obsession over numbers. Is it just me that feels this way? I know some people view me as a GW critic but I’ve said that there are a lot of GW things I truly love but their writing of rules to encourage the numbers crunching seems ridiculous.Let me know what you think.

Watch the video if you play 40k, it’s very informative and will help you remain competitive