Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Background of the Blogger

This is going to be hopefully one of the few blogs about my past and the rest will be about my current or future projects.  I thought it would be a good start to at least give readers an idea of who the person behind the blog is. I've been playing miniatures since I was 12 years old, as I near 30 years old I thought it would be fun to start a catalog of my miniature career.

My first miniature game was Warhammer 40k (40k) with the Space Orks given to me by my middle brother.  The set came with a few Goffs, few gretchin, and a cardboard cutout dreadnought.  They do always say the first dose is free.  My brother and I gamed together for a few years having epic battles of Space Wolves vs. Deathskulls. As my brother grew older his interests changed and as he went to college time for our grandiose battles on the kitchen table taking 4+ hours battling out for domination of the styrofoam battlefields.

I started to venture out  of my house and meet new gamers and with that new games.  With this came a craze over Magic the Gathering, Deadlands and a plethora of more card games.  They were all a lot of fun but never kept my attention for long.  All the while building up my 40k Ork army.  Then I found the SCGA, the first gaming store where I truly started to grow as a gamer.  I started to paint my models, picked up more miniature games.  This was probably the golden age of my miniature career for a long while.  Always opponents to play, good people to hang out with, a good clean and comfortable store to hang out in.

Two major events happened that really slowed down my miniature career.  The SCGA closed it's doors due to internal issues and college came around. It was sad to see the store I had grown to love close, but I was also moving on in my life.  My gaming career slowed to a crawl, though I did play games of Blood Bowl and Necromunda on semi frequent basis all the while keep my collection and adding to it slowly.

As college ended I had grown to be a very avid video game player, first game I took to a "hardcore" level was Counter-strike, but his blog isn't about video games so lets just say I then found MMO's.

During this time a buddy of mine and I found Privateer Press and bought our first starter boxes.  Was a great game, but we had nobody to play with so it slowly dwindled.

The reawakening of me becoming an active miniature player was when I took a job as a Games Workshop employee.  Now I could write a whole book about this experience, lots of positives (the people I meet, the cheap miniatures) and lots of negatives (lets avoid going there). Let's suffice to say I bought tons of armies, painted more models then I had ever had perviously and over all embraced the hobby to it's fullest.  Time finally came around where I didn't like it anymore, due to circumstances changing in the work environment and I decided to move on.  Sold my collection of miniatures, which netted me a little over 8 grand and I was done.  My miniature days were over. When really just my Games Workshop (GW) days.  I still own an army that I had was able to purchase back from a nice friend, but I could just never get back into GW's games.  Though lately they've had some great new model releases!

While at GW I meet some customers who also enjoyed other miniature games and this is where I picked up my second faction Circle.  This was still during Mark I of Warmachine/Hordes and we did a slow grow league and got together on a pretty frequent Thursday gaming night.  Though this slowly dwindled, I fell in love with the game and all of its intricacies at this point.

I moved onto another career and meet my wife.  During dating her we had tripped over a miniature store.  I had casually explained that I used to be a pretty avid gamer and she grew intrigued.  I took her to a few stores showed her some of the different games.  She seemed most familiar with Lord of the Rings so we picked up a couple small armies and started playing.

My original Warmachine friend that I got into with my Cygnar battle box and I decided to get back into Privateer Press.  My wife decided to play as well and hopped into Retribution.  Thus my new era of Privateer Press gaming began.  One of the biggest happenings that kept it going this time around was I bumped into a few old GW employees who had quit and were playing Warmachine as well.  So we formed a casual Saturday gaming group. 

I am a pretty big fan of Warmachine/Hordes in general and added a few more factions to my collection.  I am currently the proud owner of Cygnar, Mercenaries, Circle and Trollbloods.  I have a small Menoth collection from a random faction event my gaming group had, but hasn't grown since.

During my currently reawakening Warmachine career I have had some great gaming opportunities.  I hosted 2 league seasons winning one of the coins.  Going to a few conventions, Kingdom Con, Socal Smackdown and Lock and Load.  Placing 2nd in Lock and Loads very first Hardcore tournament, which people who are familiar to the rules can note isn't actually a prize winning spot. :)  Lastly I've gone to one local steamroller and placed second, losing to one of my close friends and common opponents of the Saturday gaming group I am lucky to be apart of.

This was longer then I had anticipated, but was definitely an interesting trip down nostalgia lane as I remembered my past miniature gaming career.  I hope everyone found it interesting or at least informative about a future blog you plan to read.

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