The Goodness of Being “White and Nerdy”: An untapped resource waiting to explode
Since receiving the new game X-Wing Miniatures, I have been reading the rule book extensively and mock playing several games against myself so I can understand all the different scenarios. I find the game endlessly intriguing, and an amazing achievement. It is fun, fast, and free in many ways that sustain the best attributes of a gaming experience. I simply love it. My wife with a polite jest asked me as we were logging on the other day to play Star Wars: The Old Republic as I was reading the X-Wing rule book, if we were being “White and Nerdy”—a reference to the old Weird Al Yankovic satirical song. I told her, “absolutely, and proud of it!” At the current moment I have a number of very key strategies in real life that are being played out and I have learned that over time, the best way for me to stay engaged and keep my mind sharp enough to deal with things on a large-scale is to give my mind a vacation while in the heat of the events. By means of vacation I don’t mean a physical vacation which we take often enough—and costs many thousands of dollars every time we do it. I mean a vacation that the mind enjoys, and during the year 2013 that has been The Old Republic which she and I play often. We enjoy our short trips to the Star Wars galaxy and they are always beneficial. But of late, I have found the new X-Wing Miniatures strategy game to be even more intriguing, and infinitely fascinating.
It can’t be missed that even though Weird Al is poking fun at nerds in his music video of “White and Nerdy” that many of the attributes exhibited in the video are good ones, intelligence, moral aptitude, social innocence, creativity among them. And the humor of that video is that it is more or less true. I know, and have known a lot of nerds, and they are like the people in the “White and Nerdy” video. However since that video came out, “White and Nerdy” types have not declined in number throughout American society, but have rather increased. To get a sample, just visit Gen Con in Indianapolis each August and meet the members of the “gaming” culture, people who enjoy strategy games to a larger extent than I do. They are people who spend even more time playing The Old Republic than my wife and I, and they are every bit into the new Star Wars Miniatures strategy game.
Outsiders might say that the gaming industry is being driven by a desire for escapism—that many of those “gamers” would rather play Dungeons and Dragons than participate in the political process. It is highly likely that many of the people who attended this year’s Gen Con did not vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama in the last election, and instead played games from Fantasy Flight around their kitchen tables. So that demographic is being overlooked in poll counts. These “White and Nerdy” types are not watching Fox News, CNN, or showing up for President Obama’s latest diatribes about education funding. Most of them find the entire political process repulsive, and have elected to drop out of it all together. They are either currant Ron Paul supporters, or future supporters of his son, Rand. And until the political machine gives them the kind of candidate they can get excited about, they will spend their time and effort of leisure playing the kind of games sold at Gen Con. Listen to the following broadcast about gaming from the guys at Mos Eisley Radio to get some perspective.
Playing these kinds of games is not an escape from reality in the same way that watching television is, or watching sports. I know a lot of mainstream people who get very excited about their Fantasy Football picks or their latest score on a golf course. The people who play games like Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures are choosing to spend their leisure time in a very thinking type of scenario. You have to enjoy thinking to be good at a game like X-Wing Miniatures. For me that is the grand appeal. I simply love that game. At 2013’s Gen Con Fantasy Flight Games who produce the X-Wing Miniatures game made a grand announcement, displaying for the first time they are taking the epic table top game and “going big” with it. They are producing the Tantive IV corvette and the Rebel Transport in a scale that has not been seen in any strategy game. The enthusiasm present upon that announcement can be seen in the interview below. The prospect of playing a game that features those large ships in a strategy format is very exciting to me. I am already planning giant matches that take up specially made tabletops taking up entire basements. It was in reviewing these recent announcements that provoked me to read so intensely the X-Wing rule book.
Tantive IV
“Tear this ship apart until you’ve found those plans and bring me the passengers. I want them alive!”
–Darth Vader, Star Wars: A New Hope
The Tantive IV is perhaps the most famous of all CR90 corvettes. Not only that, it is the first starship to appear in the classic Star Wars trilogy. We see it fly across the screen, racing from right to left across the bright surface of Tatooine, firing its rear lasers, until the shape of its hull is nearly lost behind the glow of its eleven ion turbine engines.
Coming soon to X-Wing, the Tantive IV Expansion Pack allows you to command the starship that first hooked us into the greatest space opera of all time!
Designed for use in Cinematic Play and the new Epic tournament format, the Tantive IV miniature doesn’t match the 1/270 scale shared by those starships legal within the game’s standard tournament format. Instead, this carefully detailed and pre-painted miniature is sculpted at a relative scale that feels good on the tabletop, alongside the game’s starfighters and other huge ships. In addition to the miniature, the expansion features new missions that promote deeply thematic play experiences, whether played individually or linked into a larger campaign, and Imperial players will have their chance to try to capture this notorious Rebel blockade runner.
The Tantive IV won’t be legal for standard tournaments, but you’ll be able to bring it to battle in both the Cinematic Play and Epic tournament format. Furthermore, you’ll gain the opportunity to crew it with the indomitable Rebel hero, Leia Organa!
Rebel Transport
“The first transport is away.”
–Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
When the Empire launched a massive assault against the Rebellion’s Echo Base, it dealt the Rebel Alliance a tremendous blow. Still, the Rebellion’s losses could have been much greater. They were lucky to escape with the majority of their command structure intact, and the very fact the Rebellion was able to continue its liberation efforts after the battle owed much to the GR-75 medium transport and the role it played during the famous evacuation effort.
With new rules, one Rebel transport miniature, one X-wing miniature with an alternate paint scheme, and a wealth of new ship cards, upgrades, and missions, the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack allows you to recreate the drama of the Rebellion’s desperate escape from Hoth.
Like the Tantive IV, the Rebel transport is too large for standard tournament play. Smaller than the CR90 corvette, the GR-75 medium transport is nonetheless large enough to dwarf its starfighter escorts. Even though the Rebel transport is depicted at a scale that allows you to maneuver it in battle, it is still so large that it comes with multiple new damage decks to track hits against different sections of its hull.
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4312
I thoroughly enjoy the kind of people who attend Gen Con, even though they tend not to be intensely social, or politically active. For them, playing those types of games are done for the same reason I do it, to preserve their mind in a rebellion against a society that looks down on those who are “White and Nerdy,” or otherwise, those who wish to think, and be genuinely good people. I have seldom encountered another person who attends Gen Con regularly and spends their spare time playing games like this to be overtly “bad,” or “malicious.” They are genuinely good, as their hobby is “thinking.” These games just give them the mechanism to do so in an entertaining format.
If games like X-Wing Miniatures were not so popular then the game would not be expanding into a large format with the new ships discussed above. So the delight is two-fold when hearing these kinds of announcements. First, it is nice to see creativity permeating our culture in such a positive way. Second, it is nice to see so many people excited about it. It is nice to see people genuinely happy about something that doesn’t involve drugs, sex, or debauchery, but does involve thinking. The demographic of “White and Nerdy” types who love Gen Con, and share with me a passion for X-Wing are a group who at some point will become interested in what is going on in the “outside world.” That time will come when they don’t have money for Gen Con any longer, or have the ability to stay up all night playing X-Wing or The Old Republic. For a government addicted to statism, many of these game players use fantasy strategy to give themselves a vacation away from the types of people who are not “White and Nerdy” and are willing to avoid them to keep the peace. But, when it comes a time that those “White and Nerdy” types can no longer enjoy their leisure time, then the ramifications will not be pleasant for the establishment. The future largest demographic growth sector is not women voters, Latinos, or even African Americans…………it is the “White and Nerdy” types who simply want to be left alone to think, but if prevented, can become the statist’s worst nightmare. It is unwise to ignore them. Because they are smart! And they “think” as a hobby, something that modern politics requires people to avoid.
Mechanisms like these types of games work in tandem with difficult real life strategies because they are essentially “concept” building exercises. As I’ve explained in these pages on previous articles, before any idea in real life can be understood, it must be held as a “concept.” A concept is like a bowl holding water. The bigger the bowl, the more water it holds. If the bowl is too small, it can only hold so much water. If a concept is too small, it cannot hold big ideas or strategies that are required to solve complicated problems. These days, small concepts are advocated by statism so much of society does not have the ability to hold large concepts in their minds. They cannot wrap their thoughts around them. By playing games like X-Wing Miniatures or some other variation of strategy game the practice of “concept building” is exercised allowing a mind to hold larger ideals. This is why these kinds of games are a tremendous benefit to the people who play them, and those who don’t are always at a tactical disadvantage.
Rich Hoffman
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