My first post! - My painting and board gaming history

I figured I'd get the ball rolling with a short history of my mini-painting and board gaming journey.

Ancient history

Way back when I was a kid board games were boring and something your parents forced you to play over Xmas and other holidays. Only Risk was really good (but I only played that with friends) and a few other rare exceptions. However I loved computer games including, but definitely not limited to, the Civilization series, which is basically a computerised board game.

However in 1997 when I was 13 a friend down the road from me showed me a couple of White Dwarfs he'd borrowed from another friend, and I was AMAZED! The gaming side of it sounded fun, but for me the ability to build and paint my own models was what clinched it (I also loved Lego). There was a picture on the back of the White Dwarf showing a Blood Angels army with Death Company fighting Tyranids, I think even with a Screamer Killer Carnifex model. Naturally I bought a few blister packs and MPPKs of Space Marines and painted some up, just as 3rd edition of Warhammer 40k was starting. But as my friend never really got into it himself, my interest faded after my first 15 models or so and I dropped it.

My first ever painted model! Dual-wielding bolters because rule of cool, natch.

Briefly in 6th form I started again, painting about one model, before dropping it again.

My paint wasn't as thick when I was 17, but my skills were still basic

University

Initially at university I was all about the music and the drinking, like most people. But after a couple of years I got back into painting as a flatmate was doing it and had joined the university wargaming society, which was actually a bunch of board gamers who tolerated three (with me: four) 40k players on the side. Someone else was playing Blood Angels which meant unique snowflake me didn't want to do them, and I ruled out Dark Eldar as well as they were rumoured to be getting an update soon. This was 2004, the new Dark Eldar models were released in 2010, and I learnt to ignore rumours.

My full T'au army, minus the Fireblade I bought and painted when that model was released

So I signed up for the Greater Good and built up a 1500pt force of them over the next couple of years, and a 1000pt force of almost-exclusively infantry Space Marines. Who wear brown armour as, again, I am a unique snowflake. Mean people call them the poo marines :¬(

Most but not all of my Space Marines (more have been painted since). They're not heretics, honest!

In addition to a dalliance with Orks (who got me back into painting as they were sooo much more fun to paint than anything I'd done before) that was everything I'd painted, and having stopped playing 40k due to LIFE at the end of 4th edition, it was something I came back to every year or so for a few models before putting it all away again.

ORKZ IZ DA BEST!

An example of a model a painted in one of my brief returns to the hobby. He's pretty good!

Now

But things have changed. A side effect of that university wargaming club that was actually a board gaming club is I played one modern board game called Arkham Horror, and I quite enjoyed it. And so over the years since then I've gotten more and more into modern board games (helped by other friends who are even geekier than me).

So now I have a lot of board games myself, from simple things I'm happy to share with my not-so-geeky friends (e.g. Ticket to Ride: Europe) to ones that are exclusively for geeky friends (e.g. Relic).

And I've gotten back into painting Games Workshop miniatures, albeit still somewhat intermittently and definitely slowly. That includes some of their boxed games I will one day paint (maybe): Space Hulk and Deathwatch: Overkill.

Probably still the best painting I've done yet, especially the Ultramarine second-from-left.

But a year ago my friend's clubbed together to buy me the Blood Bowl boxed game for my birthday, as to my own surprise I'd fallen in love with the rules after having played the PC game, and that is what I'm mostly about now.

I bought these just because they are gorgeous models. I also did a good job on the commissar

So that, in a grotesquely oversized nutshell, is what this blog is about: me painting models and playing board games.