This Quar's War, or why we need silly things

What if I told you that my favorite release this year was about Anteaters in World War 1. Surely you'd say, "Ben, that does not sound like a grim and dark game that you'd ordinarily play; are you feeling alright?" I'd probably reply with a wink, and a shrug, and a hum, and then tell you more about This Quar's War, from Zombiesmith and Wargames Atlantic.

This Quar's War is a skirmish game about anthropomorphic anteaters who are entrenched in forever wars, caused by slights imagined and not, and fought by those who'd rather be engrossed in a cup of tea and a slice of beetle pie. After millenia of fighting, they're doing it some more, and again, with no end in sight. Such is the reality of the Quar and their war(s.)

That sounds pretty goofy, all things considered. Muppety, egg-shaped idiots escalating small conflicts to global catastrophes, with all the gravitas of a wet cat who is angery when they should be embarrassed. I can't take it seriously, nay, I refuse to, and for that reason, I am utterly and completely enamored.

Unfortunately, the rest of the hobby sounds really bad right now. If you're reading this in the future, we're currently at the tail end of a Warhammer 40,000 crisis of faith, as Custodes can now have she/her pronouns. The grimdark space opera has gone woke, ruining all of its very serious lore and thus alienated their entire audience. Henry Caville may have even rage quit his own Amazon Warhammer series over the introduction of female characters in this faction. 

I am of course using hyperbole, but the snapshot of the internet I'm witnessing is so loathesome, and the discourse so toxic, that existing in online spaces has been a nightmare as someone who cares about wargames personally and professionally. I don't give a fig what GW does with their lore, and I'm all for better inclusion in the hobby, but the community reaction has been so vile and inescapable that I straight up disassociated for a month whenever I had to order 40k restocks. Between the people claiming that sacred scriptures have been defiled and that loyal customers are being cast aside for new blood, and the people making fun of those decriers, the echo chamber has me keeping my distance from X (Twitter,) Reddit, and Youtube.

This discourse isn't anything new in the 40k ecosystem, and is instead endemic within the culture of nerds whose politics and ideologies have grown nearer or further from those modeled within the game. Paired with the grimdark gravitas of the genre, and the pressures of life outside the tabletop, its no wonder these discussions end up devolving as they do, but its a torment that we as individuals can opt out of, and the beginning of that for me was with that funny game about turnips.

For the uninitiated, Turnip28 is a small wargame from Max Fitzgerald, wherein ill-equipped and dubiously-skilled vegetable men fight eachother in the mud, oftentimes wounding themselves instead of their intended foes, all in the name of glory or which vegetable is the bestable. Its grim and grimy and gritty, but it has the trappings of an anti-power fantasy which undercuts all of the horrible things depicted in its games as things worthy of ridicule. The pedestals that exist are clearly poorly constructed, so anything you place up on one instantly slips off or shows an unflattering side, and life continues. Its comedy in the eye of the shitstorm, or farce taken so seriously that it becomes farcicle again. As is apparent from its rampant success, humor is something the community has been missing at large, and is indicative of our needs as a whole. When you're parched, you thirst for water. When you're full to bursting with meat, its hard to reach for another steak. The same is true for media; too much of a good thing is still too much, and all diets need variety if we're to have a good life.

Which brings us back to our Quar, who eat bugs and drink tea and get "gobsmacked" whenever the stresses of conflict are too great. They're inconsistent and mediocre combatants, and they're shaped like eggs, god-bless-em. I'm sure someone could make them grim and dark, but I couldn't tell you why, and I'm not entirely sure it would work either. The Quar are more like Hershy Kisses than Shadow the Hedgehog (the two point spectrum I'm using for intimidation and edginess measuring,) nothing you can do can change that immutable fact that a Hershy Kiss cannot teach me about the horrors of war and totalitarianism*. Yet. Give it 40 years and developers who forget the words parody and pastiche.

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Soapbox aside, I think the ruleset has some really good ideas going on, some that reinforce the silly and others that keep it from getting too dark. Here are some of them in shotgun list form.

• Double blind activation, where you'll have between three to five activations, but you won't know how many until you finish your first three, leading to high risk/reward decisionmaking.
• Small model count, with no individual model customization, which keeps the complexity ceiling low, but stilll allows for variety with a modest army lists. 
• Range bands on ranged weapons that allow you to take those hail mary longshots even at disadvantage, so that you always feel like you've got impactful decisions you can make.
• Command point system replenished by heroic actions like rescuing wounded and rallying the routed. The game rewards you for actions that are de-emphasized in many modern wargames.
• "Gobsmacked" is a condition that you're just as likely to gain from your own actions as you are from those of your foes. Having accidental self destruct buttons always manages to keep things light.
• The Rhyfler's Handbook has scenarions that last 3 turns or less. Oftentimes when games advertise campaigns, they aren't things that can be enjoyed in an afternoon (and scheduling session 2 is a whole hassle.) With these shorter playtimes, you can potentially warm up and then still have time for a handful of matches, with emergent narratives and all.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to my first game of QUAR, and the second, third, and fourth. I've got the starter box**, and took the weekend to assemble the two armies it came with, so chances are I'll talk about it at least one more time before the year's out. On that note, I've gotta go get some wisdom teeth yanked, so I'll see you in the future. Take care all, and have a good week!

*This Quar's War actually has very deep and gritty lore, and someone could probably learn something from it. I won't pretend to know what that something is, but at blush enough of it feels clear in its humor that I feel safe in endorsing it as funny and clever and goofy af.

** Its actually such a good starter box. It has everything you need save for a measuring stick, but the offerings as minis and rules are plenty. It kinda has a cheapass games ethos, where they assume you have most of the essentials, and have options for you to turn your box into terrain once its done its duty. Keen!