What Race Are You?

Ho,
Fly Molo back again.

I am a good guy. A genuinely good guy I would say. I do my best to help others, I consciously think about how every action that I do affects others, I have a strong moral compass and I plan on being good the rest of my life. Compare this to what armies I collect and play in Warhammer:


Chaos Space Marines
Necrons
Chaos Daemons
Imperial Guard (Traitors of course)
And when I started Necrons, they were the evilest of evil, none of this Dynasty business.
I ALWAYS played Horde characters when I played World of Warcraft.
Sith characters when I played anything Star Wars related.
I used to play Skaven and Ogres.

As I had mentioned before, we play Warhammer because it is loaded with history, culture, life, fantasy and imagination. The game system itself is far from perfect and that is an understatement. I bring that up because we don't play for the actual game system itself. Instead, the rules function as a way for us to play with our richly imagined models. Models we've worked hard on and pour an awful lot of creativity upon.
So why do I play the bad guys?
I wish I could tell you with certainty. I will attempt it without certainty instead.
I think at its face, I am a good guy in life all the time. Why would I want to be a good guy in a game? I'm a good guy all the time, why would I want to imagine that I'm some other form of good guy? Would it be any fun to imagine that my warlord Company Commander from Guard Regiment 233 is a father of three? That he lets his mother-in-law stay with his family rent-free? That he occasionally mows his elderly neighbor's lawn? That he's considering quitting service to the Imperium because he feels that eternal war is morally wrong?
Sounds like a blast! Count me in.
This goes along with the "European" style game, in which games are focused on cooperation and problem solving. Warhammer is not one of those games. Warhammer is an "American" style game. It has me versus you. I kill you, you try and kill me. I have a turn. You have a turn. 'Murica! Yeah! I have to say, I dislike "European" style games, I don't want to build a working pipe-line, I don't want to settle Catan, I don't want to run a dough factory or trade pelts.
I want to roll the treads of my tanks over the skulls of my enemies.
Ho hum.
My good buddy Jerren Osmar plays Imperial Guard in 40k and Empire in Fantasy. I briefly discussed with him about why he plays them. He said (paraphrased) that they are just the regular people in a universe of bizarre monsters, aliens and unspeakable evils. He likes the idea that they are staring these unbelievable odds in the face and are probably going to die while doing so. Seems heroic and characterful.
Then again, he also plays Tau and Eldar, and admittedly was playing them when they were "bad" in order to win games with something that wasn't supposed to be as good.
That's aside the point though.
There needs to be a bad guy for the good guys to defeat. 40k is pretty cool in the sense that there aren't really "good guys" in their universe. For some reason, most people relate Space Marines with something generally good, or at least as protagonists (even though they commit unbelievable acts of horror regularly). Either way, most of what they do is heroic. They don't even have fear, so much like the Imperial Guard, they stand in the face of unspeakable terror, yet, are bad-ass enough to overcome against all odds. But they need something to overcome against. They need something to stare in the face fearlessly. Maybe that's why I play the bad guy.
Maybe not. Maybe I have a suppressed Ego. Maybe that Ego wants to come out and be totally bad. I don't think this is the case though. I think  a suppressed Ego would manifest as more of a Win-At-All-Costs type player. That type of player would unleash their lack of control elsewhere in life in the form of Warhammer domination. This is their position of power. Not in the imaginary world, but in the very real world of social interaction through gaming. That's a bummer because those people are dickheads.
I am no dickhead. I just play one in a game! :)

That's not to say that I don't yearn to play other armies and races. I always wondered what it would be like to roll out some sweet custom Space Marines Chapter. I even went out of my way to write up a brief history and rule set for them. They were the Sons of Mars, an off-shoot of the Iron Hands, loaded up with all sorts of sweet mechanical upgrades. Their Chapter ship was lost in a far off sector of the galaxy while defending an important Forgeworld. There was even some questions as to if their chapter was run in some ways by the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Their chapter is greatly undermanned, and their distance from anything important and their lack of mobility on a grand scale mean they need to keep their vehicles and equipment running as best as possible. They have only a few Land Raiders, only a few suits of Tactical Dreadnaught Armor and do not have the ability to make regular Dreadnaughts, period. They have to reclaim destroyed vehicles at battles end and repurpose or repair back into service. Their colors were burnt orange and black. They would be freaking awesome.
I went as far as painting an awesome test model.
And then I quit the project and started rehabbing my Necrons.
Ho hum.
What do you play? Are you always the good guys? Are you always the bad guys?
What would you play if money and time were no object?