Fandex

There's an interesting phenomenon in the gaming hobby. I am referring to the phenomenon of home brew games and army lists. Most fandoms and hobbies have an element of fans who go to the next level: railway modellers who try to recreate a specific date in a specific area, puzzlers who analyse and theorise as to how clues are developed, fan-fiction writers, etc. In gaming, we have that too, with publishing houses built on games related fiction and even in-canon manuals, conventions and such. What really makes the hobby distinct is the home brew.

Most, if not all, games we know and love today, and have played in years gone by, began as home brew systems, systems developed by players rather than professional designers, based on what they liked and disliked about the systems they were playing. Even the giant that is Warhammer, and the systems that spun off from that mighty root, began as a home brew system. That topic, thus, is a huge post, that I'm not writing tonight.

This post is, instead, about home brew army lists.

Almost as soon as army lists became a thing, people started developing their own army lists. By doing so, they could create lists for forces from their favourite stories, allowing Narnia battles using Warhammer, or Starship Troopers using 40k. Others would notice little nuances in the system's setting, or a minor faction, too small to get official rules, or a list as a stand-in until a formal list was compiled. Working within an existing system, taking nods and nudges from the existing lists. The possibilities are endless, and so are the home brew lists.

As with the models, technology played a big factor. Around the time army lists became common, the internet was growing. A few years in, the world wide web was developed. Suddenly fora allowed ideas to be spread globally, bounced around, and developed widely, independent of local meta and the core developers.

The amount of work put in to some fan lists, playtesting, developing background lore, even creating distinct models, is enviable. Some of these have led to the development of games, some to armies being added to games, some to the return of factions that have fallen by the wayside, some have allowed settings and games to continue long beyond their official lifespan. Squats are a popular example, with a new list popping up every few months, even now, 21 years after they were dropped from their game.

Home brew drives the hobby forward almost as much as official events, and other official channels. If you ever want to judge the size of a game's fanbase, take a look at the number of unofficial variant lists and such there are. The Warhammer games are huge, and there are hundreds of unofficial lists, scenario packs, setting packs, etc., available at the swipe of your fingers. For Bolt Action, there are packs for the Spanish Civil War, the Korean War, etc.

If you like a system, you can probably find an adaptation of it, on-line, for whatever flavour of specialism you fancy. If there isn't, why not start working on one? Without a doubt, you'll find other people looking for the same on-line, with whom you can collaborate. The hobby is only as small as you want it to be.

And, yes, to a degree, I'm yet another working on a squat fan-dex, albeit that my focus is on pulling disparate loose ends of lore to build a logic for a force I'm building. I'll leave creating new profiles and units to the more devoted fans. I'm following Jervis Johnson's advice from Citadel Journal, volume 2, issue 33, and am using an existing list. I've enough random gaming thoughts swirling around my head without trying to do profiles and such.