Necromancy at the Bay Area Open 2014

Spoiler Warning: These guys win.

The first time I ever heard about Warhammer 40,000 was when my neighbor Corby came over and saw my brother and I playing Weapons & Warriors. He said it looked similar, and we thought that was cool, so he tried to teach us. We tried to get into it, but he wisely warned us not to. The cost of this particular wargame is little much for a 10 year old. We loved looking at the pictures, and my first memories of this game are pictures in a magazine and extrapolations from our imaginations. 16 years later, the hobby has changed significantly, and my understanding for the game, the lore, and the hobby have developed. The magic, the possibility, that wild, unfounded extrapolation born of inspired imagination is mostly dead. I say “mostly,” because after last Sunday, I will never say “dead” again. Well, except that I will, but I’m reminiscing here, cut me some slack.

Cut him some slack too, it's not easy being green.

I started playing Warhammer 40k when I was about 14. My friend got a bunch of models from his dad, and I bought some with my allowance, and we tried to figure out how to play. We went down to the local comic book shop on Saturdays and bit ankles until people took pity on us and let us join in. We met nerds for all walks of life, all ages, genres, and stereotypes. Goths, bikers, teachers, bouncers, software developers, insurance agents, we all had something in common and it brought us together once a week. I was raised by my parents every morning and evening, by my teachers 5 days a week, and by the foul mouthed, uncouth, irreverent, tough loving nerds of DNA cards and comics one day out of seven.

SAWS Challenge Keeps the Indy GT Spirit Alive. by Seth Oakley

I’m never really sure how Google knows what is going on. I mean, they could have a lot of really smart people that research issues and make predictions. They could collect a lot of data and then use it to predict trends. That was the conclusion of classical mechanics as I understand them: If you knew the location and velocity of every particle, you could predict everything that was to come. Further research has shown that you can’t know both pieces of information, but still Google is able to predict, almost to the minute, how long it will take me to drive up to Sacramento to hang out with my friend Dan and cover the SAWS Challenge, a 5 round Warhammer Fantasy Grand Tournament. Google Maps put the drive at 2 hours, 10 minutes. I would be leaving San Francisco on a Friday evening, so traffic would be rough. Maybe the estimate went up. I ride a motorcycle and can cut through most of it, so maybe the estimate went down. I would be taking 80, and there was road construction, so the estimate goes up. It’s 80, so people are going like 75 mph, so the estimate goes down. I got lost and had to stop and look at a map, estimate goes up. Still, 2 hours and 10 minutes later, there I was, at the hotel, right at the time Google had told me I would be there. Can they manipulate traffic signals to control this flow of cars? Did they turn off the lights of the signs that would have guided me? All good questions for another time.