I Have Built a Shrine to Warhammer 40,000: Conquest the Card Game

The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.

“For You,” Carl Sandburg

Several times a year I’ll break one of my old decks out, deal out a flop of five planets and deal myself a theoretical hand. I’ll do this simulation with a particular deck over the course of several days, seeing if I can remember how the scheme for a particular build fits together. Flexing the multiple layers of situational analysis I taught myself when one of my Conquest rivals was across the table waiting to bury me in aggression and dispiriting counterplays.

Warhammer 40,000: Conquest playmats that came with collections I bought up in 2016 when the game got discontinued. Serious players were hanging it up because the game would no longer be supported by Fantasy Flight. I was just learning and wanted every piece of it I could get my hands on.

I test dealt several opening scenarios recently with my Packmaster Kith deck. She was a Khymera herder from a faction known back then as the Dark Edar. Now they’re Drukhari. By the third deal, I was remembering the synergy of the cards in the build and let a low whistle out: “This shit is mean.” This was the kind of deck I started building after I got my fill of losses incurred by my early tendency to build thematic decks full of weird, expensive, fussy bank shots instead of going for the jugular with more obvious or effective choices.

I may turn ol’ Kith loose on Rygar or The Don, who still indulge me in a game now and again. I gave them two of my most murderous builds to learn with and fielded some of my more experimental second-tier decks while they cut their teeth. They learned quickly and clobbered me. Recently they have both also touted their unbeaten record. I think it’s time to give them a new view of just how real shit can get in the Traxis Sector.

In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of having improved this long and rectangular old living room with a pleasant arrangement of artifacts from my number one game of all time. I mounted some playmats and got some card frames up, and I’m happy every time I look at it. It’s the least I can do for a game that has given me so much, and may yet provide a thrill or two before the sector falls dark.