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I started out wanting to tell cool stories. When you're 10 years old you can't really go out and buy armies, so you built your collection via Birthdays and Christmases and saving up, so most games were largely the same as we had the same army all the time. Necromunda was a huge change to that, as for the same cost as an army you could get loads of different gangs and do all sorts of crazy things.

Over this time I developed a real love of using the games to tell stories, and setting up scenarios and seeing where the games took those plot-lines. It was a lot of fun. I got out of the game before 2nd Ed went away because I just didn't have time for it.

Later on, mid-way through 3rd Ed, I got back into it when a group of my friends got into 40K. I pulled out my old models, and then as I actually had a job things accelerated. I was more into the competitive side of 40K at this stage, where I spent more time building lists (which I liked doing, and still do like doing) than anything else. I was someone who would tweak a list into next week, stomp my opponents with it, and then never use the list again. I still never use the same list twice, but then it was about "Can I make this list work. Yes, it worked. Ok, onto the next one."

Before Apocalypse came out I started to grow out of that mentality and I developed a "Been there, done that." attitude towards competitive gaming. I started getting more into the "story telling/narrative gaming" aspect, where every game had to a story even if the lists were still made to be powerful (I maintain to this day that, no matter what pointless platitudes or wishy-washy cop-outs people offer to the contrary, we still all play to win, no matter how "casual" we claim to be).

Towards the end of 3rd Ed we grew tired of GW's 40K - 4th Edition was horrible, and I never touched 5th Ed - so we wrote our own. It's better than the one they wrote, but in hindsight it also needs a lot of work. We played that for years, and enjoyed it, but too much of it was "play testing" and not just "playing".

Eventually I got into the 40K RPG, as here was a way of working within the 40K universe (which I love) without having to deal with the nonsense of the actual 40K game. It's the thing I most prefer to do, and the fact that I get to write for those RPG lines is even better.

6th brought me back (for the most part) as I'm more interested in playing 40K now than I have been in years. Sadly even with an agreeable set of rules (virtually all the deal-breakers from 5th are gone, or at least replaced with less egregious versions) the Codices still leave so much to be desired. I had hoped the new Chaos Codex would bring us back from the bring of disaster that was whatever the feth that 4th Edition 'Chaos' Codex was (Generic "Lesser" Daemons... feth that book). The new Chaos book was a better book (not that that was difficult to manage), but it was't interesting and had none of the flare of the last real Chaos Codex. The new Marine Codex was a breath of fresh air, but I was really waiting for my Tyranids to come back... and once again I was left with a crap Codex that inspires nothing but derision and feelings of boredom. The 4th Ed Guard Codex brought about a similar feeling.

So now I buy more models from other companies, mostly in service to the 40K RPG's. I look every model in the gaze of "What could I use this for?", and I've got heaps of cool things to use now. I've also branched out into other games a little bit. Not other wargames mind you - I have too much 40K stuff to get into a new game, not to mention all the BattleTech stuff I got towards the end of high-school because I needed to play something - but things like Zombicide have been perfect for me.

This weekend just went by I played in a small 40k tournament with my beloved Guard. Apart from one of my friends and a Blood Angel army, every army was either Eldar, Tau, or something with that Tau dataslate. It reinforced how much I dislike competitive 40K and what a complete waste of time it is to just see how quickly someone can win with a netdeck. It also reinforced just how much going first* is important to 40K.

And on the next day of the weekend just gone by I spent the entire day with 3 friends (two of which were at the mini-tournament the day before) playing Zombicide. We played from about midday 'til nearly 10pm. We had a blast. More of that please, less of the other thing.


*I went first in all my games. In all but one of them night fight was active in the first turn, meaning I couldn't do anything, meaning my opponent had the effective first turn. In both instances I was either shattered to the point where I couldn't win (and things went downhill from there) or put into a situation where no matter what I did winning wasn't really an option - both games were lost on the first turn. The game I went first in saw me obliterate my opponent's starting line-up, forcing him to run headlong into a Guard gunline, something he did not survive.

underfire wargaming wrote:


I am very surprised you do not want to use Resin miniatures and stand with only plastic casted miniatures. I will say as a company odds are I will never do plastic casted miniatures, as i never found anyone who could cast them for me, and those few who do offer services the prices for a single mold scare off most smaller companies like my own and so we stick with either metal or resin for our casting material of choice. I am sorry to hear that because their are a lot of companies if not the majority that cast in those two mediums. I might be able to find a cheap plastic caster in China or something but i would also rather like to support local companies to do my casting for me.

Anyhow everyone has a right for their own choices i just see that as limiting what you can buy in the wargaming market? as most companies do not cast in plastic at all.

Well, I do have a number of resin models, and I suppose I would buy another resin model if I liked it enough and the price was low enough (lower than resin usually goes for). Unfortunately for the little guys, I just do not enjoy working with resin. I do enjoy working with plastic. I already have more models than I could ever assemble, barring some kind of life-altering head injury-related convalescence. There really is no reason for me to buy resin when I don't want to and don't have to. (I did buy into the Total Extinction KS if it helps.)

I feel for you. It would be nice if you could cast minis in a medium that wasn't so expensive and fiddly 'boutique'. But I think you'll do fine without me, as there seems to be no shortage of die-hard resin collectors posting on Dakka about the evils of undercuts. May you sell them each their weight in resin minis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh wait. Are you the guy working on the space gnolls? Because if so, I'll probably buy some of those unless they get stupidly expensive. like KD resin ta-tas expensive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I tried raising a league at my local high school, but it actually got me "fired" from that school so I put the kabash on that plan for a while. At least until I get tenure.

If it's not too sore a spot, do you mind sharing this story? I would really like to know, especially since I am in a similar field. PM is fine if you want. Or you don't have to share at all. No pressure.

I'm just really curious how that happened.

It's been, what, almost a year? I think I have enough distance from it now.

Besides, I owe you at least that much, since you contributed to help me get the minis to the students.

So I gathered minis from benevolent gamers, and purchased a few plastic containers, paint pots and brushes from the dollar store. Because taking money from kids in an official capacity (I represented authority of a sort) was iffy, I decided to give away the minis and material. I had about seven or eight boys interested. I would give them demos of a simplified version of 40K, I'd even bought DV in French and made copies of the charts and basic rules. We got through two painting sessions in the art class, then the principal came by and saw that we were playing a wargame.

My ass was out on the curb in record time. She was a hardliner against having the armed forces do recruitment in school (on career days, not on an ongoing basis, they never do that) and she saw what I was doing as glorifying the army in a way. So that was it. She threw everything I had given away, and I've never really been called back to sub at that school.

I remember when you posted about that project, and I thought it was an absolutely amazing initiative. I'm sorry to hear about the shitheel principal and just how things turned out, man.

Harsh.

Yeah, I was likewise told I wasn't welcome to run a wargaming club in my school because some of the parents were anti-war and would complain about it.

Quite silly, to my mind. I'm anti war, and I've played wargames since I was twelve. If you don't approve of wargames, don't send your kid to wargames club, perhaps.

It's unfortunate but I am not interested in fighting with anyone over it at my school.

Really sorry to hear your story though, man. That's really out of line. At the least, she could have explained that she didn't really want a club like that, and just left you alone afterwards. Really unprofessional behaviour from her.

Planning: Build an army list and buy to that list now.

Planning/Painting: Buy a model, paint it, buy a model.

First ever 'wargaming' purchase was a copy of Space Crusade given as a birthday present when I was young, moved on to 1st edition 40k Rogue Trader and then Epic Space Marine (2nd edition), which was probably my favourite game for some years; still remember the 20,000pt a side games we used to have with friends, a 15ft long table with dozens of titans and entire regiments of tanks and infantry on the table thinking back it was pretty mental. The games used to last an entire weekend, young fans of GW these days have got no idea what they are missing without there being a true mass battle system.

Loads of different board games over the years, managed to get some non-wargaming friends into D&D at unit that was fun, and got back into 40k (after leaving wargaming entirely at 2nd edition) at the end of 4th edition. Got into WFB with Undead, a spell working in GW about ten years ago meant I played pretty much every army (this was back in the days when staff got mental discount on metal, by weight.. an example of this was a Steel Legion army, about £400-worth, that I paid about £80 for!)

Only touched GW games for wargaming until I was working overseas. A big order for a new O&G army got cancelled by Wayland after they told me that sorry they would love to take that £200 off me, but there are new trade rules in place. So, spending some time looking through the online store I ended up getting into some other games; Infinity, Flames of War, other historicals and numerous other bits and pieces for painting - and haven't looked back from then really! So I guess I should thank GW's myopic business decisions for a widening of my wargaming/miniature horizons

These days I'm still really into Infinity, some of the new Mantic games (I love Dreadball in particular.. that game should be required playing for anyone into wargames) and some other historicals with less well-publicised rulesets, that nevertheless are played at local clubs. I'm slowly building up a Dwarf army that will be used for WFB and KoW, but knowing my painting speed it's likely to be some years before they hit the tabletop!

So, to the OP I would like to say my palette has widened somewhat over the years, and am really enjoying the mass of high quality games and miniatures that are around these days.

HBMC, you could have just written this mate!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
40k.

In collecting terms, I've always been guilty of hoarding and not doing anything with it.

I've always enjoyed putting the models together, but was never really happy with my painting ability which led to plenty of abandoned army projects. It's lucky GW stuff holds its value quite well and I recouped most of my spending via ebay sales.

To be honest, I find small scale games far more fun anyway (shifting large numbers of figures around a table always got tired quickly) so I have now bid farewell to Warhammer (the price of collecting an army these days was a huge factor in this decision) and I'm concentrating on building Mordheim warbands while branching out into other stuff like X Wing and Flames of War.

I've never been much of a player. I always approach a system with a "maybe, someday..." mindset (focusing on one or two armies with the potential to build playable, if not overly powerful or even terribly distinct, lists), but painting and modeling is where I really spend my time, limited as even that is. I started collecting 40k and focused solely on that for a while, but I was never married to the universe/system - it's simply where I started. I began branching out some time ago, adding generic fantasy armies (all Mantic models), Infinity, and most recently FoW.

The biggest shift has come in my mindset regarding painting. I'm generally meticulous, if not a complete perfectionist. My first models came out rather well, largely because I researched like crazy and labored for hours on them. Time and effort, more than talent, have resulted in my painted collection, thus far. Over time, though, I've seen how slowly the painted portion of my models has grown and I've also seen more and more finished armies from other painters and gamers - the impression left by a full display cabinet, the quality of quantity making ranked units more impressive than their individual paintjobs warrant, etc.

Now, even as a P&M guy, I'm trying to consciously shift toward a more tabletop style, increasing my productivity more than pushing my limits for individual finish. It's been hard, as it genuinely seems to go against my nature (as evidenced by the fact that I'm still scraping mold lines off of 15mm plastics that I know will be painted in a more abstract style that doesn't really require perfectly smooth contours), but that's the goal, at least.

Early influences include hero quest(a lot of us can prbly say this) risk, axis and allies.

When I was 11 my parents bought me the star wars source book by west end games for their star wars rpg. We were on a long car trip and the bookstore didn't have any comic books. 15 bucks for a hardback source book I didnt even realize it was a game at first but soon after me and my friends were rolling dice.

Started 40k in high school, space marines of course! Wish I still had some of them, to laugh at if anything.

Now its the old story, more money much less free time. I don't even update my marines now when a new codex appears.
I've been collecting dust tactics. Awesome and cheap, ready to paint out of the box which saves time. They are fairly durable so I'm hoping to introduce my boy to wargaming in a few years with them. Got some heavy gear minis to scratch the giant robot itch. Thinking about getting into actual historicals so I must be getting old.

I used to buy a lot of 28mm stuff, not just 40k. I am still surrounded by unopened boxes of the stuff, but I do not have a desire to revisit 40k in the near future. I mostly work on my own game rules and campaign systems and have switched to N-scale modelling as I really enjoy it and building a huge army of Tau and converted down to the very fingers on a model, both have trained me to work with fidgety things.

And real wargaming is done at a smaller scale anyways

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
It's been, what, almost a year? I think I have enough distance from it now.

Besides, I owe you at least that much, since you contributed to help me get the minis to the students.

So I gathered minis from benevolent gamers, and purchased a few plastic containers, paint pots and brushes from the dollar store. Because taking money from kids in an official capacity (I represented authority of a sort) was iffy, I decided to give away the minis and material. I had about seven or eight boys interested. I would give them demos of a simplified version of 40K, I'd even bought DV in French and made copies of the charts and basic rules. We got through two painting sessions in the art class, then the principal came by and saw that we were playing a wargame.

My ass was out on the curb in record time. She was a hardliner against having the armed forces do recruitment in school (on career days, not on an ongoing basis, they never do that) and she saw what I was doing as glorifying the army in a way. So that was it. She threw everything I had given away, and I've never really been called back to sub at that school.

I'm sorry to hear how that ended. I was excited for you and your students. Did the principal give you any kind of warning? Throwing away your (or the students') property is pretty extreme. Have you talked to anyone at the district about the incident, because it seems like she was not acting very professionally, especially if you had cleared the activity with other teachers or administrators.

I find myself more attracted to skirmish style/size games now, and have spent a few quid on X-Wing and went half in with a mate on Deadzone and the Rebs/Marauders boxes.

Next up for us will be either the Batman game or Judge Dredd. We think we can use these to get none gaming but still nerdy mates involved.

However first up, there's the small matter of finishing a Lizardman army in ten days...

***EDIT***

Forgot to add, I've also started to really like boardgames and such. My little collection currently consists of:

Forbidden Island (played once)

Dungeon! (played once, drunk with friends)

Zombies!!! (played twice, both times drunk)

And I'm really liking the vibe of Munchkin. And Elder Signs looks fun. Same for Arkham Horror.

Siiigh, I wish more of my peers were open to games nights.

I used to dislike painting when I first started because I wasn't good at it. I was only 10 or 11 and thus had a limited selection of paints and only rudimentary understandings of techniques. I typically had grey armies as a result, and the heroes I did decide to paint out of respect for their lore, had limited palettes.

Then I grew up, and now that I have my own funding, patience, and the inclination to research methods and techniques, painting is now my favorite aspect of the hobby. It even beats modeling now! Sometimes I rush through construction just so I can prime it and start the madness . . .

I also now have an interest in Xenos! Back in the day, I was a fierce Imperium loyalist. Hated anything not human. Now I'm very open-minded and have 7 armies!

I started out with Warzone 1st edition and was even on a playtest group credited in one of the books(its my only claim to any mention in a book and even then vaguely lol) and got into 40k from meeting that small group of friends who 20 years later were my groomsmen at my wedding so yeah, wargaming did provide life long friendships(they by they way got pissed off at the massive change from 2nd to 3rd and quit playing, but we still hung out). I have seen games come and go, have been really into 40k for over a decade at one time having almost every main army. With the newer edition, owning a house, getting married, and other expensive hobbies, I don't have near as much time to play anymore and mostly just paint and build. I have sold all but 4 armies and even two of those are in the process of being sold and one of the remaining is more of a oversized combat patrol than an army(barely 1250 points). Instead I concentrate on the fluff and modeling aspects and play when I get the chance. I prefer the Horus Heresy to anything GW proper puts out and that army continues to grow.

Now days gaming has gone full circle. My group of friends have gotten back into 40k for 6th edition now that their kids are old enough to pay for and buy their own small armies and warzone is back on the market again. I still mostly paint, I have however met a new group of friends in my new neighborhood who are working at establishing a wargaming group and so it begins anew.