It feels like ages ago (though it's around a year and a half) that I got a boardgame called Shadows over Camelot.
Boardgames were becoming trendy back then, and we just got over the wave of Settlers of Catan/Carcassonne/Saboteur. Looking for something more complex for my circle of friends, I bought this game after reading some favorable reviews. Turns out everybody was right, and it's a really fun game to play that we still take out sometimes. The point here, however, is that it contained a set of unpainted miniatures: 7 knights, 4 Saxon and 4 Pict warriors, 3 artifacts and 12 tiny catapults. Of course they were perfectly usable that way, however, by luck (or fate?) I later heard of a gaming shop having opened in town, where you could go and paint your miniatures. So I gave it a try.Sadly, the shop eventually closed (they're still open elsewhere, I'm talking about Red Goblin), but not before I painted my miniatures, got to know people who were into wargaming and generally had a jolly good time.
So first things first, here's what I got painted:
... and some tattooed Picts!
Obviously I could do a better job now, but I just got started with these. And I want to get around some time in the future to do some corrections.
Things got interesting when an attempt was made to spice up the miniature painting group with a couple of contests. I signed up for one of them. We had to make a diorama. Here's what I've achieved:
Finally, the turning point was an initiative called "Tale of X Wargamers" (where X stands for any number as we couldn't decide how many we actually were). The target was to start up a group of wargamers who would gradually buy and paint miniatures, and in the end they would each have a sizable force to play with. The initiative eventually faltered due to lack of interest/participation, but it sure got me going. I didn't buy miniatures right away - it was time for research! I was already familiar with Warhammer 40k lore due to the PC games and some books that I've read, but right then the interest seemed higher for Warhammer Fantasy. I wanted to play both, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on miniatures. After reading through some forums, I decided to play Chaos Daemons - an army 100% compatible with both gaming systems - and I made my first purchase. But more on that later.
Another effect of this initiative was that we were itching to play - although we didn't have any minis. So we put the store's supply of painted Warhammer Elves to good use as proxies for our future armies. Here's a picture of a game of Warhammer Fantasy. Lizardmen on the left, Chaos Daemons on the right. Couldn't tell right away, now could you?
P.S. Red Goblin and its friendly shopkeeper also got me into my other two gaming hobbies - Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. I'll post about those, too - in due time.
Oh, also, kinda crazy that I find your blog when the LAST post features the same picts from your FIRST post back in 2015. That's some karmic stuff right there.
ReplyDelete