Return to the Hexes

I sat down to play some Godtear with my boy Gearbox and I realized that I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d played this game. It’s been years. Would I remember how to play? 

Thank goodness for Gearbox who, without a hint of sarcasm, handed me the explainer cards that outline the difference between the plot phase and the clash phase. That, I remembered. It would be fine.

I stopped playing Godtear for awhile for two reasons. The first is that I got really busy with other stuff. I went to grad school, drastically pivoted my career, moved to another city, then abruptly and suddenly moved AGAIN to ANOTHER city. My spouse went through some career and life changes, my father had some health issues, etc etc. 

But that’s life, right? And people go through life and still play Godtear. So there was a second reason, too. I got a little bored. It felt like the games were taking a long time and the puzzles they presented just weren’t as much fun as they had been. It was a mix of fatigue, a disconnect from some of the changes the game had gone through, and a feeling like things were stuck. I always liked to play loose, roll a lot of dice, and go for big KOs, so a world with Durthax and Construction swapping in for Quest wasn't my flavor. That's not really the main thing though. Honestly, I think I just needed a change.

I was in on the kickstarter for Godtear and when it showed up in February 2020, boy howdy was I excited about all of the games I’d be playing with my friends in person using these beautiful models. As lockdown set in and I began to comprehend the forced isolation and to feel the loneliness bite, I decided to finally be a person who plays a game online. Aside from just the tiniest bit of WoW and Diablo, I had never really played games online before.

I was afraid that I’d have to put up with a bunch of rude internet randos in order to get my Godtear in. I was grimly prepared to accept this. Instead, everyone turned out to be lovely. Literally everyone! I’m not sure how that is possible, but I’ve actually never really had a bad interaction with people who play Godtear online or in person. At least not that I remember.

In those early days, I was subletting a cramped, soggy basement in Washington DC during the height of summer. There was unfathomable tragedy all around me, my in-person friends were thousands of miles away, I wasn’t allowed to see anyone, and everything seemed to be falling apart. However, I could spend some of my day thinking instead about these new champions, Jeen and Keera. Was Jeen OP? Time would tell.

I’d like to just shout out some of the old heads from those days. James Doxey, stand on up! Mark Cardenas, where you at? Ellio!!! mbauers???!! Sunday Taco!!! Rainbow Connection!!!! MIGHTY FINE PANTS!!!!!

Thanks to Pants, I think Rainbow Connection and I might have played the first ever Jeen game outside of SFG because Pants had that TTS mod updated in mere minutes. We were discovering Godtear. At a time when we were isolated and trapped at home, we were exploring something. It mattered.

Somehow, impossibly, I had a little community. It made things better. I was thinking about the game a lot, and i wanted more people to play it,think about it, and join in the discovery. So, I started writing. And… kept writing. And the Objective Hex became my little pandemic hobby. Some people baked banana bread; I wrote about little plastic Tolkein toys. It was wonderful.

So… getting bored with Godtear felt sad because it meant less time with a special crowd of people. But I WAS bored. And at the same time, some new things were possible that hadn’t been as I got more fully immersed in post-lockdown life.

So sitting down to play Godtear again with my buddy in person and finding it fun was really a gift. It was like getting back a little bit of what I had hoped for when that first set of kickstarter models showed up six years ago. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about tournaments or longshanks or blogging. Just some games with my friends.

And what do you know - Godtear is still good. The dice still mess with you, Shayle’s ult still slaps, and the Mistwood Rangers still melt under scrutiny. I like chess clocks! They let me play loose instead of staring at the board for 20 minutes to extract diminishing incremental value from a plot phase. I like LDP - it makes more champions relevant to more scenarios.

SFG is the Warmachine company now. That will stay true for a long time. We may never see a new Godtear release. And that's OK, actually. All I wanted at the beginning was games with friends. We will always have that. And Godtear, even with its limited releases over the years, has held my interest because it has so many different kinds of board states. I like a game that keeps presenting new twists and turns because it attracts the type of people who think that sort of thing is fun. It’s nice to be back on the hexes.