Origins - Part 2 - Miniuture War Gaming

 

Welcome to the Second part of my... well, who knows how long series, Origins!

In this Episode of Origins, We will be covering my rise to Wargaming in a miniature scale!

 

 

It all started, as most of the time it does, with Legos. Legos for me were the ultimate expression of creativity. I could make whatever I wanted.... and after that I could make even more and SAY it was what I wanted. This pile of bricks there? That is the fort of the enemy brick soldiers. This pile here? Why, that is the super awesome radical transport for my superpowered soldier dude to attack the enemy base. The Best part about Legos was the ability to create whatever you wanted, then just imagine. Even now, as a 25 year old, I desperately miss that imagination of the 6 year old me. It was always interesting, looking back, that you could make these blocky, knobby creations look smooth, feel right for your uses. I remember building planes and cars that would be perfect for my uses, then keeping them for well over a year, seperate from my other legos, so they could be easily accessed and played with. In addition, the customabilty of the mini-figures themselves was... well, staggering. Once you have a few sets under your belt, you could make literally any number of combinations of little dudes, who were then your friends. Sometimes he was you, kicking baddie butt and taking baddie names, other times he was your best friend, kicking baddie butt and taking baddie names. And he always had a travelling armory... Sword, gun, torch, laser beam, a freaking plane with ALL the missles, no baddie could survive long. Regardless, and the point of this exposition.... Legos are AWESOME. And led me straight into my next Minifigure love... Mage Knight

Mage Knights were a random thing I found, browsing around in a Games Plus... Packs of 4 dudes, usually will little to no relation to each other... but sometimes you would get those really nice, rare heros and it would all be ok. This was the first actual game I discovered for miniatures... I think I still have a boat load of them buried in my house somewhere. I may dig those up, just to remember. ANYWAY! Mage Knight was a fairly simple game using D6 dice and a tape measure to run around about.... well, usually kill enemies. There was also a series of dungeons that came in the form of maps with the starter packs. I think my favorate thing about Mage Knight was the random little treasure chests you could get. Actually, I take that back. I had two more favorate things about this game... the first being the Fluff behind the game. The Lore for this game was fairly well expanded upon, giving rise to huge fan-fictions, spanning pages and pages and pages of content of random websites I would find. I spent hours absorbing clashes between The Atlantean Empire and the Black Powder Rebels. Lastly, Some of the sculpts and models for this game were truely incredible. For example, the Solonavi... were these beings made of... magical etherial powers formed together, and the model representation of that was a multihued translucent plastic that made them look SO AWESOME. You can actually see one in that picture above, bottom left corner.

 

A quick jump from Mage Knights was Mech Warrior, a very similar style game with huge mechs. Very cool, but I like this more for the models than the game. But again, I was young when I got into it, so I may not have really understood the rules. This was my first real brush with Science Fiction in the miniature, and again, the Fluff was really cool, particualarly because Mechwarrior had a ton of Stand alone content well before these models.

 

And then... I stopped it all. I purchased my last Mechwarrior Booster in... 2003.... and that was it for YEARS. For 5 years I had nothing to do with miniature wargaming. The friends I had at the time were not into it, and that is ok. But after my freshman year of college, it all came back

 

The summer after my freshman year of college, I was gainfully employed by a local Parks and Recreation Department (Still am). I met a Gentleman named John. Now this John, he was 6 years older than me, smart as heck, and one heck of a Nerd. Of course, through the course of our discussions, I asked him if he had ever played Dawn of War. He looked at me, scoffed a bit, and said, "You know that is based of a Miniature war game, right?" I was flabbergasted. I hadden't known that. What... what is this? What is that? What does this mean? As it happens, John actually played Warhammer 40k... though he hadn't in a long time, and was currently working on a project on the Blood Angels. Every time we worked together after that, all I could do was as questions about this game, about the Fluff, and about the models. If you could not tell, the Fluff behind games is what captures my attention. And, as most of you well know, the Fluff behind 40k is... Prodigious. Eventually, I purchased the Assault on Black Reach Painting set, 5 Space marines and some rudamentry paints to use. The end result was ... awful. But to me, they were everything I could have wanted. They were nostalgic and new at the same time. I still have some of those first models, and will eventually post a showcase of them. I was so excited and proud, my second marine I painted I made a Salamander, and gave it to John, because, you know, introduced me to the hobby and all. It has been nearly 7 years since those fateful conversations... My painting has gotten much better, though it could always use improvement, and my model collection has become absurd, grand majority unpainted and unassembled. And, as always with these things, ever expanding.

 

Now more recently, I have branched out of 40k, first into Infinity, then into Bolt Action, Warhammer fantasy/Age of Sigmar, and then, newly, Frostgrave. One of my biggest inspirations has been watching people play games on Youtube, big ones being Miniwargaming, and Guerrilla Miniature Games. These people have such a passion for what they do, and so really helps refresh the passion in myself.

That brings me to about right now, the Present, the end of 2015. From Legos to Mage Knight, Mechwarrior to Warhammer, Warhammer to Literally Everything else. I hope through this blog to share my... ever expanding delving into the Hobby of Model Building and Miniature War Gaming.

 

How did you get into Wargaming?

 

- Rob -