40k losing its appeal

Ok guys this isn't a rant about the prices of games workshop, even if they are getting ridiculous. This is my thoughts on the game in general. 

I love 40k, I've played it for years and have numerous armies.  But lately you could say that I'm all 40ked out.  Pick up games down my club or organized games against my friends have really lost all appeal to me.  Playing against the same people all the time has become repetitive, facing the same list week after week.  Not only that but its become an arms race.  One guy will get a bad assed new unit, and another guy will get one to counter it, then the first guy gets a new unit to counter that.  Now that gets expensive.  This just encourages power gaming.  Now there's a time in a place for power gaming its called a tournament.  If I want to try a new unit or army for that matter I don't want to be steamrolled off the board because I brought a weaker list.  Not that I have a problem with losing, I just don't like battles to be completely one sided.  The close games are always the more fun.

A lot of the guys from the club are feeling the same way.  We've been diversifying into other games.  Bolt Action and Malifaux are on the rise.  There's a bunch of us wanting to get into Dropzone Commander.  And everyone who has played the X-Wing games I've demoed have really enjoyed and have shown an interest in getting their own squadrons.  Actually there was one guy last night who played two games of X-Wing who then proclaimed that it was quickly becoming his favourite game.  Despite the rise of these other games increasing popularity I don't want to give up on 40k.

So how to make 40k more fun?  Well I reckon the key lies in narrative games.  Throw all the power gaming, all the arms races, all the poor sportsmanship out the window.  Make a narrative scenario with themed forces that's the key to unlocking the full fun potential of 40k.  Last year my cousin and I came up with a scenario called Ork's Drift, which we loosely based on the battle of Rourke's Drift.  The scenario involved my entire space wolves army manning a central fortification and he attacked it with his entire ork army.  He rolled a d6 for each of his units to represent the turn upon which they arrived.  His stompa was due to arrive on turn 10.  His units could arrive from any table edge of our 12' by 5' board.  If an ork unit was destroyed it would come back on the board the following turn.  In order for the orks to win they had to wipe out the entire space wolf force.  For the space wolves to win they had to hold out until the end of turn 15.  I lasted until turn 15.  I had one grey hunter left who was desperately trying to out run a stompa.  He addmitedly got squished.  The game came right down to the wire and had some great moments. 

I challenge any of you reading this to give a narrative game a shot.  They're a lot of fun.  In fact I might post a battle report or two of them in the future.  That's it for me for just now.  I'm off to plan my next narrative game, I've got a dark eldar slave raid in mind.  So until next time, happy wargaming.