It's humorous to read people's reaction and to say it's anything but this.

Do this. Find a random person on the street and explain to them what it is you do. Keep trying this and you will find that you describe it in this manner because, despite your view on it, it's ultimately viewed by people as a game of Star Wars spaceships, toys to most people.

I have a lot of people tell me they will never retire because they will get bored. I've been retired now for 5 years and I'm never bored because I play with plastic toys representing ships, aircraft and spaceships.

And I have a lot of fun doing it with a lot of different people of all ages. The bored can work their whole lives but, it is not for me.

I think it's really sad that some people never developed enough interest in anything other than they jobs, to stay active and interested after that job ends.

Some of us have fun jobs and work with fun people.

E.g.: After our morning standup meeting this morning, several of us stuck around to debate whether Star Trek's form of FTL was more plausible than Star Wars'.

Things got a little spirited.

(Nerd alert, you have been warned)

Most people have no idea how difficult it would be to travel to another star system since we all have been given the Hollywood ease of hopping on a spaceship and going across the Galaxy in an hour or so. It takes vast amounts of energy to get to even the next closest star system at 10% lightspeed, much less using negative energy (whatever that is) to power the Alcuberrie drive (or however you spell it) which is very close to what ST warp drive would be. The magic of hyperdrive is just beyond belief, we don't even have the beginnings of a theory on how it could work.

I play with toys. Even in tournaments, I'm still playing with toys.

I don't think describing it as such is self denigrating at all. It's simply being honest with myself. I may be 36 (when the hell did that happen!?!) with kids but I'm still a big kid myself whenever I can be.

I feel sorry for anyone that has lost touch with their inner child to the point they see playing with toys as somehow shameful. Growing up is over rated, save the 'maturity' for when it's actually needed.

No, we're playing with cardboard, cards and dice - the ships are purely awesome decoration.

No, we're playing with cardboard, cards and dice - the ships are purely awesome decoration.

Real nerds use acrylic!

When I was five, we played in the back garden with Star Wars toys, and ran about making "pew pew" and "whuuummm" noises. The only difference now is that I use a set of rules to help adjudicate the "I shot you, you're dead", "no, you missed", "no, I definitely did" argument.

This is basically the entire reason I started playing miniature games. When I was a kid I tried to make rules for playing with plastic army men and later, Lego figures with weapons. Neither of these ideas got anywhere because they required a crazy long attention span for a kid that age, and I've got an average attention span at best.

My brother and I used to make spaceships and space bases out of whatever we had on hand - lego favoured heavily into our designs - but we'd cannibalize other toys till we each had a collection of miscellaneous "spaceships" - after which we would "fly" as many as we could carry in our hands over to one another's base, and attempt, through various pew pew noises and explosions, to convince one another that we were winning the contest. Being the elder brother, I made up the rules, so I always won.

When I play with my youngest son, we ditch the rules, and just fly the ships around on the table using the maneuver templates. Pew Pew sounds are still welcome.