(As if this blog isn’t already
all about me…)
Just about six years ago I
started this blog. Now, according to Blogger, this is the 1000
th
post (assuming I haven’t deleted any along the way… which I might have… I can’t
remember…). Since Blogger started keeping stats for me in July of 2008 There
have been nearly 350,000 pages views and there are now nearly 400 public
followers (Really!? Who ARE all of you!?). For the record, the most popular
pages have been
A
Ranger and a Mage Walk into a Forest… (with 1678 hits -1200 of them
were in the first couple days of posting it. I have no idea why it got so many…
Someone, somewhere with a LOT more followers must have linked to it),
The
DPM Painting Tutorial (with 1639 hits
- I’d really like to do more stuff like this… it’s just so…
time consuming!?),
Vietnam
in 28mm (with 1204 hits), the very out of date (and no longer
“complete”)
28mm
Moderns Complete! (with 955 hits), and
King
of the Hill (with 520 hits).
Anyway, it’s been a lot of fun
sharing my hobby with you all and I greatly appreciate all the feedback,
comments, and encouragement.
This year I turned forty. I celebrated by hosting a
DBA
Campaign - something I’ve wanted to do for over twenty years. AT this
point I’ve been gaming with miniatures for nearly 30 years.
It all started with a few Ral
Partha fantasy minis for D&D. It was the minis that drew me to the game.
Not so much the monsters but the medieval-looking knights in armour. The first
actual miniature wargame rules I owned was
Battlesystem
for AD&D – though I never was actually able to play it, really. I think I
soloed a few games with the cardboard counters that came with the game. I was
never able to convince anyone else to play the game with me or amass enough
minis to make a unit. But it has always been a megalomaniac dream of mine to
play a character that (or run a campaign wherein characters) starts off as
lowly men-at-arms or whatever and rises to commanding armies and carve out a
kingdom by their own hand…
Later I picked up a handful of sci-fi figures and modern-ish
figures for Traveller and Top Secret. I always wanted to track down a copy of
Striker,
but was never able to.
The first real miniature battle
game I bought and started building armies for was
Warhammer
Fantasy Battle (3
rd Edition). I had Orcs at first (mostly
Ral Partha – this was before anyone really cared who made your minis and other
manufacturers minis were even pictured in the WFB books!). Later I built an
Empire Army (which was mostly Citadel historical minis) and then a Bretonnian
army.
(Remember: click on the pictures
for a bigger version)
The earliest pictoral evidence of my hobby, circa 1989. Teh original photos are actually in black and white - I didn't do that in an image editing program to make it look "old". I was taking a Journalism class in high school and we did a photography section and shot B&W film. That's my first "real" historical unit. An Indian colonial unit. Looks like some Naval Brigade with them. Probably Ral Partha. I'd started building units hoping to play some colonial actions using
The Soldier's Companion from GDW's Space 1889.
Some GW townscape buildings in the background. Some Rafm British...
My painting desk looking about as messy then as it does now. Some things never change. Old School Land Raider.... Minifigs Zulus... Paranois Robots... Call of Cthulhu Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath... British Camel Corps... Many of those I still have. Some I wish I still had.
I think there's some Blood Bowl guys in there too... Adeptus Titanicus Titans.... DArk Future Cars... Polly S and Ral Partha paints...
I had a stab at running a few campaigns – mostly they
fizzled very shortly after starting, mostly due to guys who were much cleverer
than me at figuring out how to break the point system contained in that initial
volume. None of the books that followed (
Warhammer
Armies,
Realms
of Chaos, etc.) seemed to help… By the time the Fourth Edition came
out (the first boxed set with plastic minis) I was ready to pack it in.
That's Mikey K in the background, so his elves must be on the table. This may have been during the last attempt I made to run a WFB campaign - using the original
Mighty Empires - we shared a border with Jay V's undead realm.
My Bretonnians readying for some epic battle against Jay's undead.
Me and the Bretonnians in John Burt's basement.
Along the way I’d played a lot of
Blood
Bowl (2
nd Edition) and
Battletech
- which I had a lot of painted minis for. I also picked up a lot of Rafm’s
French and Indian Wars figures, and some Wargames Foundry English Civil War
figures, and later a few colonial minis, but was never able to find anyone interested
in playing such things with me so I didn’t do much with them…
I think we played some
Retinue
for a bit with our warhamer figures (which worked out as mine most of mine by
this time were Wargames Foundry Medieval/100 Years War figures…). We also
played a bit of
Rogue
Trader with whatever we had… While I did have a handful of Eldar and
Space Marines, I also remember games involving Egyptian colonials and fantasy
figures…
Then DBA came out. this was the first historical game I was
able to get other people excited about. Probably because it required so few
figures to be painted. The first army I built was a Later Achemenid Persian
army for a planned Alexander the Great Campaign. My friend Cory picked up
Scythians, Mikey K, I think, had Thracians,
John
was to do the Greeks… I can’t remember who was doing the Macedonians…? Jay…?
And maybe Tod D. was going to do Indians? I think I was the only one that ever
fully painted an army. I played a fair few games with Cory and Mike – with
their bare metal armies (I think Cory eventually painted a few of his…). I know
John BOUGHT a few figures for his army… but never took them out of the packs…
At some point Cory, Mike and I replaced our armies with 15mm
versions… and picked up a few others… and then everybody went their separate
ways. I didn’t do much gaming for a few years. No one to game with – or at
least no one with an opposing army.
Somewhere in there, half a lifetime ago now, I joined the army…
A leaner meaner Tim, 20 years ago, attempting to strike a heropic warrior pose, or something...
That's me in that NBCD suit.
Me again, some days later, less enthusiastic about living in a bunny suit for days...
Hero Pose of me and my camouflaged truck.
20 May 1992 Wainwright, Alberta - I fell asleep some time in the morning. I think it was the first time I'd slept in days. It was bitterly cold and had been pissing down rain for I don't know how long. fell asleep listening to the pitter patter of rain on the canvas above me... I woke up some hours later and the pitter patter had stopped and I thought to myself "Thank goodness for that" I opened the tent to the scene above. I may have screamed....
Around the turn of the millennium I got back into gaming –
building some new DBA armies and this time building two (and later more)
opposing armies, so I’d never be left high and dry if an opponent moved away…
not that I HAD any opponents. I picked up a few other odd things here and
there. Tried out
Stargrunt
II and
Dirtside
II. I played the latter with homemade tanks made of bits of wood and
toothpick or finishing nails. Both of which I really liked, but again, could
never find players. I always wanted to try out
Full
Thrust - but was never able to track down a copy.
Then I met
John Bertolini by chance. I was working in a
magazine store and he came in a bought a copy of Miniature Wargames – which
usually, at the end of each month, I stripped off the cover and took home for
myself!? Finally I’d found someone else whose primary interest was HISTORICAL
miniature gaming! We played some Russo-Japanese War games with rules he’d just
made up.
These are actually some pictures John's wife Amy took of our very first game. We are using some of John's fabulous collection of homemade Russo-Japanese War figures.
John took the Russians and I took the Japanese. I think I scared the willies out of him (and I'm sure he was wondering if he'd invited a madman into his house) as every time I had a remotely successful dice roll I threw my hands up in the air and yelled "BANZAI!!!" (I think I'd recently read Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen).
Japanese cavalry advancing to the front in column!
I have no idea who won... as is the case with most games I've played with John. Dice were rolled. Fun was had. I got to yell "BANZAI!!"
Later I dragged him out to play some WW2 games a long with
another new friend, “Other Tim” (Tim Miller), then owner of Reader’s Bookshop
Saskatoon. We tried out a number of different WW2 games (first with 20mm/1:72
plastic, and later 15mm):
Tactical Commander, a Warhammer 40K WW2 variant, WRG’s
Armour
and Infantry, some super simple skirmish rules published in an old
Wargames Illustrated,
Crossfire,
and finally Flames of War.
I ended up running a few Flames of War leagues before
burning out and tiring of the warhammer style play… and around that time I
started this blog… You can go back and read the blog to see what sort of
shenanigans I’ve been up to since.
Hmmmm… this has turned into a History of Tim’s Gaming
Shenanigans… originally when I sat down to type this I’d thought I do more of a
What I Do When I’m Not Painting Toys and Playing Games….
So when I’m not painting toys and playing games and blogging
about it I’m an artist and a dad. I’m also a bike riding fool. There’s blog
about that nonsense too, if you haven’t found them:
But given how much I get around to posting on those blogs,
it is pretty clear what my one true passion is…
I also have a separate blog for Savage Worlds:
Sometimes I’m not entirely sure why I have a separate blog
for that. I think it’s because I was planning to chronicle role-playing
campaigns there and wanted to keep THIS blog strictly about Miniature
Wargaming. The lines between “role-playing” and “miniature wargaming” have
always been pretty fuzzy for me though… I’ve always used miniatures in my
role-playing games and I’ve always maintained that the very best miniature
wargames are when the players are “role-playing” the commander of the troops on
the table (rather than a lawyer representing them in a case to determine a BEST
WINNER!).
I’ve done many other things in
my life. I’ve worked in a few game stores The Wizard’s Corner (Saskatoon’s
first game store) and later Collector’s Edge. I worked in a magazine shop
(Empire Magazines) and a record store (
Vinyl
Diner CDs and Records). I’ve also worked as a security guard, a bike
courier, an army reserve radio operator, a carpenter, a bicycle mechanic…
I briefly attended university on
two occasions. First majoring in Physics, the second time Studio Art. I never
completed a degree. Meh.
Um…. Is there anything else you want to know? Ask now! Or
should I just shut up and get on with the posting of more pictures of toys and
battle reports?
Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:
I thought I’d clear off the game table and do a bit of a
stock taking and post pictures of my entire collection as it stands right now…
Stay tuned for that! I’ve also been working on some new cheap and nasty modern
buildings for modern skirmish gamin’ -
Force
on Force, Superheroes, Zombies,
whatever…
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