And so it begins...

So this is what it is all going to be about. Nerd stuff. Mainly collecting and painting fantasy and sci-fi miniatures, but seeing as that is currently mainly focussed around a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I am running, I guess I'm going to blog about D&D too.

I've never stopped loving fantasy and sci-fi miniatures ever since I was about 9 years old (1989 - still in the hey day of old scool GW) and I first saw some Space Orks (Blood Axes I specifcally remember) at a friends house. I also remember giving away plastic Space Dwarves, one to each guest, in the party bags for one of my last birthdays at primary school, and I remember even some of the cooler kids who were on the football team being blown away, if only very temporarily. We all used to like playing Combat Cards during wet break, but only a few of us had seen the models themselves before. For a few of us, that was enough and we were bitten by the bug. Next stop HeroQuest, then very quickly on to Warhammer (4th Edition - don't hate me Oldhammerers!), Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, although that was quickly passed over in favour of 2nd Edition as we were still young. Around the same time I was learning how to play D&D from a very good friend of mine Russ (who is now one of the players in my own D&D campaign), and our wider group were running our own games of Shadowrun. Soon after that, we were designing our own RPGs based on our favourite fantasy, Sci-Fi and pop-culture influences. My friend Shaun's homebrew Alien vs Predator RPG is still one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played, and we played at least three campaigns of that. Mostly while drunk on cider. Because we were 13 and we live in the west country.

I started collecting Space Marines pretty much from the beginning. I was never a big fan of the 'main' chapters of the time, (and I still harbour a deep mistrust of Space Wolves and Space Wolf players alike) although it took a little while to decide on the chapter I still collect to this day: Fire Angels - who featured in Rogue Trader: Compendium as veterans of the Badab war (lots more on that in later posts). The first marine chapter I came up with myself, and tried to paint to my own scheme, were very late founding called The Tornadoes, and had a predominantly black colour scheme with yellow hazard stripes on the helmet (RTB01 Beaky marines, obvs.) They looked terrible!

Anyway - I've recently got back into collecting and painting in a big way, and have meen motivated to blog about it by being introduced to the Oldhammer Community by my mate Shaun (he of AVP fame).

The trouble is, my painting has not come on an awful lot in the intervening years!

I'll finish this opening ramble now, and tomorrow I'll post some very ropey pictures of the models I currently have on 'display' in ridiculously cramped conditions in my office.