Hello All,
As I am sure you know playing repeated games of 40k over a weekend or at a tournament can have deleterious effects on one’s health. In order to counteract such impacts I invited a special guest: Dr. Mink M.D. L.B.C.P. for his expert opinion on whether it is better to stand or sit during a 40k game.
This article is satire and should be treated as such. The jumps between science and pseudoscience in this article are satirical, and should be interpreted about as seriously as an Orkish doctor.
Standing Up for Yourself: How to Stand Your Way to better Play
By. Dr. Mink MD (Mustelid Doctor) LBCP (Licensed Badger Chiropractic Practitioner)
When I was first approached by the Stoat’s Center about writing an article about the benefits of standing vs sitting while playing Warhammer 40k, I had many of the questions that I’m sure you do as well, dear reader. Questions like: “What is the Stoat’s Center?”, “Did they have to install special Primarch-sized toilets all over the Imperium once Guilliman woke up?” and “Are there actually any benefits?”
Let’s start with what we know from the current literature: Prolonged sitting (either in one go or as an overall majority of your time) is associated with poorer health outcomes, particularly for metabolic and cardiovascular health. These poorer health outcomes vary, but tend to be proportional with how much you sit, leading some to classify sitting as “the new smoking”. We also know that certain activities, such as exercise or punctuating periods of inactivity with short walks both tend to ameliorate the negative consequences of sitting for extended periods. But that’s where the current research ends. So how do we apply that to 40k?
Like any good scientist, I devised an experiment. In order to test the hypothesis that standing was better for you than sitting (a scientifically supported claim!), I decided to run a Warhammer 40k game where I stood while my opponent sat. If my claim was true, the standing player ought to win. However if the sitting player won, then clearly the experiment was flawed and I could just tweak the variables until I got the outcome that supported my hypothesis that I already decided was correct. Yay Science!
Now, some caveats: First, since this experiment took place during pandemic restrictions, and I live alone, I had no opponent to play against. The 40k battle was therefore a simulated battle against myself. Second, since I haven’t had a really solid understanding of the rules since about 7th edition, I decided to reduce the battle to a roll off between two armies, with one player (myself) rolling while standing, and the other (also myself) rolling while sitting. Third, since all my models are packed away really nicely, I decided to proxy the two armies as two glasses that I had on hand.
Methods:
Step 1: Set up the two armies (proxied) some arbitrary distance apart (distance = x). See Fig 1.
Step 2: Roll to determine the victor (Higher number wins). See Fig 2.
*Scientist Tip!: If you want to speed the process up, roll to determine who wins before you decide which dice belongs to which army! That way you can always align the results with your previously decided hypothesis! In this case I decided that the blue die belonged to the standing player and the red to the sitting one.
Results:
As you can plainly see in Fig. 3, the standing army outperformed the sitting army. If we want to get really technical, the standing army rolled a 2, while the sitting army rolled a measly 1, indicating a 16% improvement in performance when standing while playing vs sitting. While I’ll leave the truly complicated spurious statistics to those fine folks at the Stoat’s Center, even a humble Tau player like myself can tell that those are some mighty fine improvements!
Conclusion:
Standing is better for
your army performance than sitting. This article was funded by whoever makes
those insole things that make your feet hurt less when you stand a lot.
Hush hush! we don’t do that here…..not unless I get a cut anyway.
**Cough**
Well thank you Dr. Mink, always a pleasure, if you have any questions for the
esteemed doctor please enter them in the comments below.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
