A holiday interview with The Conesy
The day Christmas sucked.
At first
Christmas seemed more or less the way it always had the year I turned 16 . My
Mother my Sister and I all drove down to Grandama and Grampa’s house the way we
always had. When we got there we were greeted by Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and
people we had never seen before who had recently started sleeping with our
Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. There was the same fake tree propped up in the same
corner of the same room it had been my whole life. There was a card table next
to the door where people had plopped down an ever growing pile of sugary
goodies which there was absolutely no chance would all be consumed in one day.
Even then I was planning which ones I would take home when they were inevitably
offered to me at the end of the night. I dodged the line of people lining up to
ask me how I was doing in school and what I had been up to. I didn’t explain to
any of them that I had recently discovered a game called Warhammer that was played
with little figures because, well… it wasn’t worth it. There was ham and turkey
and we did all the normal Christmas things that most families do when they meet
for the holiday.
After
everyone had finished eating and the “grown-ups” had nursed their coffee a
habit I told them plainly was akin to a drug addiction and would never have any
part in (as I writing this I’m on my 2nd cup of the evening) it was
time for presents. As was the tradition the youngest children capable of
performing the task became responsible for digging around in the mountain of
gifts wrapped up and under the tree and placing them before the boxes new owners.
My family is far from wealthy but due to just the number of people in the
building there were quite a few packages and the whole exercise could sometimes
take 10+ minutes. At first everything was fine my youngest Cousin had placed
several small packages on the coffee table in front of me and I was old enough
to be patient. As the minutes dragged on however I became slightly troubled by
the seeming inability of my pile of presents to grow. “Surely”, I thought “this
can’t be it”. The previous year my stack was one of the biggest hundreds of
dollars worth of electronics (or what passed for electronics in 1999) and
sweaters that I would never wear. Maybe
it was a mistake maybe something had been mislabeled or put into someone else’s
pile by mistake. Maybe they had all gone together and bought me something big
that simply wouldn’t fit under the tree. I was 16 after all maybe one of these
little packages in front of me had a set of car keys in it. My pile never grew
beyond three small boxes. I was visably irritated, I even made a few dry
comments about it that I tried to pass off as humor. I knew being angry about
this was selfish and wildly in appropriate, but I was angry. When it came time
to actually open the presents I was in such a foul mood that I didn’t even
start until everyone else was nearly done. Basically I threw a tantrum because
I didn’t get enough presents I don’t know how obvious it was to those around me
it was because it was a fairly contained tantrum, but that’s what it was,
What
I hadn’t taken into account was that the dynamic of my family had shifted. I
was 16 and was for all Christmas related purposes an adult now. On top of that
both my Sister and one of my cousins had Children of their own now. I was one
of the Uncles now not the nephews. Christmas would be different for me from now
on. I think
most adults have all gone through a day or two like that hopefully most of them
handle it better than I did but we all go through it. What I regret more than
anything else about my reaction is the expectation I had that on Christmas I
should just get stuff period end of story. For the rest of my life I’ll have
that Christmas to look back on when I find myself acting selfish or entitled
way something that certainly still happens on occasion. With that in mind and
given that for the first time in my life I have a forum from which I can do
some good with nothing more than a proverbial typewriter I thought this week
would be a good time to highlight something we as wargamers can be proud of.
The people who make Christmas better
Like I said my family isn’t rich but it could
have been worse for us and I always got plenty of toys to open on Christmas,
sadly that’s not the case for everyone. Enter Toys for Tots, enter long time
Warhammer Fantasy player Ben Cone. For years now Ben (Conesy) Cone has held his
annual Merry Mayhem tournament in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, as a Fundraiser
for Toys for Tots. Run as a simple one day 3 round event Mayhem players are
let’s say “strongly encouraged” to bring donations for the charity in form of
unwrapped unopened toys. Players receive raffle tickets based on the value of
their donations and often are eligible to win a whole army. As the Consey is
fond of saying “We play with our toys so that the kids can play with theirs.” The whole atmosphere of the event is casual
uplifting and most of all fun players compete not only with Orcs and Elves but
also in outdoing each other with elaborate costumes and I’ve been told on more
than one occasion with shots.the missions have Christmas themes and there is even custom terrain.
This
year’s Marry Mayhem tournament was held on November 22, to great success. I
decide to ask The Conesy a couple of questions his event.
Doctor Z: When did you start playing
Warhammer? How did you get involved in it?
Conesy: I have been playing Warhammer for
what feels like forever now. I always had a thing for miniatures when I was
young. Heck, my first miniatures game was castle legos, or whatever variant it
was back then, with rules for armor and fighting. However, I grew up in
very rural Wisconsin and there wasn't any place that sold Warhammer or
miniatures for at least an hour drive. I picked up Dungeons and Dragons and was
hooked on RPG gaming for quite some time. When the local hardware store in
Reedsburg, WI started carrying Warhammer I couldn't resist and picked up, what
was then, the 5th edition boxed set and the D&D group converted over to
Warhammer.
DZ: What was your first army, what was
the appeal of it for you?
Conesy: After picking up the 5th ed starter,
which I guess you could call the Lizards and Brets then my first armies, I
instantly started collecting dwarfs. I played a dwarf in D&D by the name of
Dougan Brightaxe who long had sought to secure an old ancestral hold from the
goblins that now held it. It made perfect sense to me at the time to jump right
into the dwarfs and start playing out those battles to retake his hold on the
table top.
DZ: When did you start to be more
involved in the Midwest Warhammer Fantasy community?
Conesy: After a few years, our local group I
started with moved way or ended up with family things and we were down to 3 of
us. If you play Warhammer, or any game for that matter, against the same 2-3
opponents things get heated and competitive. We were about to give up the game
honestly, until we bumped into this Rogue Trader Tournament at Gen Con
Milwaukee (the last year it was there) and instantly started looking into this
thing called tournaments.
DZ: What do you think of the changes to Warhammer
fantasy?
Conesy: Changes to the story arc and
advancing the story can only be a good thing. It means, if they continue moving
forward, new stories, new arcs and new changes to the game. New and interesting
list builds and new reasons for the armies to fight on the table top. It's
Warhammer at the end of the day and whether you are tournament playing or
playing in your garage, you can take the pieces you really like and put
together the events you want to play in and that others enjoy.
DZ: Had you run tournaments before
Merry Mayhem?
Conesy: I have run a number of events,
including tournaments prior to running Mayhem. This is probably the most
involved event I run though.
DZ:Why do you feel so strongly about
Toys for Tots?
Conesy: We play with our toys so that kids
can too. There just seems something right with playing games and toys and fun.
It's not something I had lots of when I was a kid and it's something that I
want to share. There is also always something really cool and unique about many
of the toys that players in the Warhammer community give away as well. Deep
down, I think a lot of Warhammer players are kids and like to play with toys
and giving to Toys for Tots let's them, in a small way, encourage a new
generation of wargamers.
DZ: When was the first Merry Mayhem and
what made you decide to do it?
Conesy: The first Merry Mayhem was just a
simple 1 day tournament. There wasn't any charity components. A lot of the one
day events were starting to come up with names for themselves and so I picked
this from an Ozzy/Rob Zombie concert I had been to recently.
DZ: How many events do you run each
year?
Conesy: I run 2-3 tournaments a year these
days, though other then Mayhem, the little events I run tend to be no more then
12-15 players and mostly local guys. I also have a hand in getting things
organized for paint and hobby days, escalation leagues, club play, megabattles
and other crazy stuff for the local crowd. It's as much energy trying to keep
the local crowd enthused and trying to bring new players into the fold as it is
putting together this one event (Mayhem)
Conesy: Merry Mayhem had 38 Warhammer
Fantasy players.
DZ: So how much do you end up donating
each year 50 or 100 dollars worth of stuff?
Conesy: Merry Mayhem, as an event this year
contributed over $875 in toys and cash to Toys for Tots. This is our 6th year
doing the charity drive and over the 6 years we have raised over $5000 for the
charity.
DZ: Is there anyone you want to thank in particular?
Conesy: This year, I would like to thank my
staff who pulled together wonderfully on the day of and let me sit back and
really just coordinate the chaos that is event day. Thank you Brian, Sean, and
Brian (yeah, 2 Brians!).
DZ: When do you start planning for next year’s event?
Conesy: I started planning Merry Mayhem 2015
about 2 months ago.
 |
| By the way if you haven't seen this movie you have homework. |
What’s
amazing about Marry Mayhem to me isn’t what it is, Wargaming charity tournaments
of one stripe or another are not all that uncommon, the amazing thing about it
is that it isn’t uncommon. I think by know it’s pretty common knowledge that
very few tournaments make much if any money and that the people organizing them
put not just hours but whole days and weeks of their lives into making them
work with very little personal gain to be had.
The fact that people Like Ben Cone and any number of tournament
organizers him care about these charities enough to make this happen is
remarkable. The fact that the people going spend all year complaining about the
price of the hobby but still arrive ranked up like infantry the day of holding
armfuls of gifts is equally remarkable. No we as gamers are not always saints,
anyone who’s ever read The BoLS comments box or spoken to one of my ex
girlfriends could tell you that, but maybe the success of Marry Mayhem and tournaments
like at least says something good about a community of people that never really
forgot the importance of toys.
And remember
every time the you click this link a Blood Angel gets it’s wings.
Mail bag
Once again if you've hated everything I've had to say or if you have a 40k related question or comment of any type please send it to me at doctorz.evil@gmail.com and I may just but it in my next mailbag column
What's your favorite charity? Are you a Grinch?
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