Returning to 40K

For the past six months or so (really all of 2009 so far) have been spent not playing 40K.
I started out the year playing Fantasy, which wasn’t so bad but would have been better if I hadn’t been playing it with the oldest armybook currently in use. Fundamentally, it’s not a bad game, but there are some serious army balance issues that I’m looking forward to seeing resolved (later this year, if rumors are true). Also, all this gaming took place within the context of an escalation league that was fun… but ran a couple of weeks too long.
I then followed up Fantasy with War of the Ring. It’s new, looks neat, and I had a fun idea for an army. As I’ve said elsewhere, this is also a game that’s fundamentally pretty fun but starts to have issues the closer you look at it. Although I’m less optimistic about the game getting cleaned up (since that would really require a new edition, and the game’s not been out six months), I do think a little distance will help. Plus, as with Fantasy, all this gaming has been within the context of an escalation league and it’s running a bit long, too (despite making this league shorter than the previous Fantasy league).
This past week, I decided I needed a short break from War of the Ring before the league wraps, so I played some 40K (against Bill, Sean and Tyler) and had more fun than I’ve had in a long time. All three of those games were nail-bitingly close. Two of them were games I shouldn’t have stood a chance in (I went in knowing that mechanized Eldar should be nearly impossible for my Khornate Daemons to handle) but managed to eke out a win and a draw in. It’s nice to come back.
This week’s the last week of the War of the Ring league. I’m back to Harad for the week, and I think we’ll be doing something to celebrate the end of the league (we were going to have our traditional Top 8 tournament, but given that WotR seems tournament-unready and we don’t have eight players, it’ll have to be something else). I hope to get some momentum up later for painting my Skaven in anticipation of the new book. Saving that, though, I’m very much back to Warhammer 40,000.