Hullo,
I've been familiar with this site for awhile now (about a year of casual browsing of topics and hints and tutorials about modeling and painting) but only recently bit the bullet and decided to join the forums as a member. I've known about Warhammer
40K as far back as my sophomore/junior year in high school WAY back around 1989/1990! Mind you, this was around the time when it was only the first incarnation of the game!
*coughLEADMINIATUREScough* My friends were into it and I quickly became a fan of the game and started buying minis to compete against said friends. One of them was an Eldar player, his brother played the
Squats,
remember them?? Their friends were also Space Marines and Orks respectively. So, you see, a pretty diverse group of armies all ready to fight, so what did I go for? Imperial Guard. Got me a back issue of White Dwarf #109 which had the army lists for the Guardsmen and went out and bought me the plastic box set. Well, after evaluating the stats alongside the other armies, my enthusiasm for the Imperial Guard faded...no disrespect, it's just that Imperial Guard need a metric ton of units and my pre-job having self didn't have the resources to maintain that kind of army off the bat! So, what did my goof
do? Started buying Orks! Even though my friend had some Ork models, I found out about the 6 Ork tribes to chose from. So, I went with Death Skulls...mainly because I could recycle all the Imperial Guard stuff I wasn't going to be using (I know, I could've gone Blood Axes, but Death Skulls are cooler!) But, again...not wholly satisfied with the stats on the Orks...I set them aside and then found my true calling...
See, I never really wanted an army that was on the good guys' side. It's why I went Orks after the Imperial Guard, but then I saw Chaos and
none of my friends were even thinking about using any of those armies back then. Opportunity! So, I went out and bought the Slaves to Darkness book and the original Space Marines plastic set. Out of the four Chaos gods, I was drawn mostly to Khorne. Yadda yadda yadda,
blood for the blood god! So, my army was picked and miniatures were being purchased, built...and kinda painted...yeah, even back then it was hard to get every figure painted in your army and on the table! My excuse? I was still in school at the time (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!) I didn't know anything about what is relatively common knowledge
now about the hobby itself in terms of prepping the mini, cleaning mold lines, pinning the mini to a base, priming, base coats, shading, highlighting and sealing a finished mini. White Dwarf was my source of info and even though the internet was in it's infancy around that time, I honestly didn't think to look up information back then! I made due with what I knew and had...I wasn't going to be taking home any Golden Daemon Trophies (heh, I doubt I'd do it now either!) but I was moderately happy with what I was doing back then, even though I was flying by the seat of my pants!!! (As an example: drybrushing blew my mind when I first tried it! "How did this sorcery work!?!?!??")
Well, by the time I had gotten to that point in my painting and played a handful of games (getting together to play was a pain that every RPGer can relate to, amiright?? Playing 1st edition just added to the length of the games, trust me!) 2nd edition came out, "And the town rejoiced...'Yah...'" Me and my friend went half in each, he got the Marines, I got the Orks & gretchins in it (because I was still debating on whether I should dump my Orks at the time) Well, shortly after ALL this went down, people graduated from high school. Few times in the summer we were able to get together and play, but nothing hard core on a daily basis. Eventually, I was getting minis and White Dwarf magazines on my own because I was just that into
40K, even though my friends had stopped. Did I have anyone to play with? No. Did that bother me? No. Why? Because I had become more involved in the painting and modeling/conversion work at that point and I was just fine with that. Well, eventually, life happened. Got a job, a few over the years actually, and essentially stored (rather badly) my Ork and Chaos armies, along with my paints and other tools/brushes. Honestly, I'd say it was the mid-90s when I stopped buying stuff and moved on with my life, a little TOO much partying distorts the ole' memory!
Well, to wrap this long winded
introduction up, about a year ago I finally said the Hell with it after seeing a combination of a bunch of YouTubers posting Total War Warhammer 2 AND Dawn of War 2 videos. I know they are computer games, but it stirred something up inside of me...plus I had been seeing numerous Warhammer and Warhammer
40K art on my Pinterest feed. The Beast hath been awakened once again! *Dr. Frankenstein voice*
"IT'S ALIVE!!!!" So, I pulled out my old minis and paints, which surprisingly, only a few pots, out of about 35 to 40 of the original
GW colors didn't survive the 20 plus year hiatus (I also stored them pretty bass-ackwards, so that's my own fault!
)
So, I had to learn a few things this past year: how to strip paint from a mini, how to base a mini, which...the old White Dwarf magazines were content with saying glue it, put sand on it, paint it green...there's SO many options now! My head isn't spinning (anymore) but yeah...the sheer amount of information has grown by leaps and bounds over the decades and I for one am certainly glad for it! Anywho, I'll be around to ask questions that probably have been answered by now. Eventually, I'll get around to posting some stuff for critiques as well so, hope you guys like Rogue Trader and 2nd edition minis!
