Hobby Stress

While writing my post about Necrons, I got into a serious 'thing' writing about hobby stress, and figured it should get a quickie post of its own.

'Hobby Stress' is a term I like to use for the feeling a new player gets when he feels like he's 'doing it wrong'.  The first model I ever built was a jet plane.  Just a cheapo Wal-Mart kit, and when I got it together I immediately painted it bright, glossy red with a glossy black nose cone and tail fin.  I hadn't 'done it wrong', and it never occurred to me that I had.  I had a lot of fun building and painting a jet that would be totally unsuitable for war.  I put it on my desk, and nobody ever told me that a real f-14 would be grey and have squadron markings on it.  Or that The Angels of Absolution actually lost all their Predators on Threndar IV, so I shouldn't be allowed to field them.*

To be fair, every list has associated 'hobby stress', not just marines.  But no matter what you put on the table, somebody will walk by and snidely point out that your black-shirted orks are actually Goffs, and they wouldn't hang out with your red-shirted orks.  Or that 'real' Tau would use different deployment protocols or something.  A reasonable person might look up and say 'I don't care, my black orks are Oakland Raiders, and the red ones are Kansas City Chiefs.'**

But nerds like me who want to fit in -and are painfully aware that they almost never do- would probably just apologize and study up on how to play orks 'right' when they got home.  This is ruinous to the hobby.  I don't think it's always a matter of elitism or bullying.  I understand that a lot of it comes from loving the fluff, and wanting the game to be characterful.  You read all the books about the Dark Angels, and now some doofus is completely screwing it all up.  

Nobody wants to feel like they failed at having fun, though, and the idea that you can play 40k 'wrong' is a great way to get people to quit playing entirely.  You don't have to think my NFL Orks are cool.  I'm just asking you to back off, and let me enjoy them.  Nobody made you look at my table, man.

* I made this up, this is not true.

** Yes, the Raiders and Chiefs are division rivals, and would are also unlikely to be friendly with one another. If you wanted to point that out to me, you are exactly the problem.