![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have been spending a lot of my free time painting Warhammer 40K minis. My friends and I are starting up a group where we play against each other. I suppose you could call it a league, but that implies that there is serious competition going on. None of us really care about the game. We've been armchair generals for years and just want to have some fun with our friends. The funny part is, all of us are pretty good at strategy games. This is probably going to be a huge challenge for all of us.
Rob is probably the best strategist out of all of us. He's been playing Warhammer for years. The few of us who have Warhammer experience have not been playing as long or as regularly as Rob. Chris is pretty intense, too. He's extremely clever. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say out of everyone in the league, I'm probably the worst strategist. I've been playing strategy games for about ten years. I have no Warhammer experience, though, so this is new to me.
So far, I've found I really enjoy painting minatures. It is really relaxing, and I can point to the really cool looking figures and say "I painted that." It's not something I get to do often. I'm painting a Tyranid army, which is an army made of insectoid monsters guided by a class of thinking bugs that keep the rest working as a hive. y halo thar Starship Troopers. Tyranid armies are actually called Hive Fleets, and come with names like Hive Fleet Juggernaught (bitch), or Hive Fleet Ragnarok. Big, scary sounding names. I'm going to call mine Hive Fleet Heinlein, after the author of Starship Troopers. Other ideas were Hive Fleet Stranger In A Strange Land and Hive Fleet Dina Meyer, but I felt they were a bit of a stretch. What I've noticed about the Games Workshop suggested color schemes is that they don't make the bugs look like actual bugs. With my army, I'm going with complete earth tones and looked at a lot of pictures of bugs for my colors. A lot of my army looks very much like a cross between beetles and mantids. For someone new to minature painting, I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. They're not the best painted minis out there, but I definitely think they're decent for a newbie. I'll post pics tonight.
Rob has armies for Imperial Guard, Chaos Marines and Orks. Chris is working on an Eldar army, Joe is borrowing our armies (I can't blame him, WH stuff is expensive), and I am working on a Tyranid army and thinking about starting a Tau army eventually.
As far as the Warhammer 40K universe itself, I've been reading up on it for a while. The setting is awesome, but mostly because it's standing on the shoulders of giants. It takes a lot of its ideas from some of the very best science fiction, and adds a bit of a fantasy element. It could probably be described as Dune having a baby with Starship Troopers, midwifed by The Forever War while Cthulhu watches in disgust. I got into a brief conversation with a nice guy at the Games Workshop store who was giving me tips on putting together my miniatures. We started talking about the influences on the setting. It occured to me that I should read The Forever War. It sounds like an awesome book.
Once I'm done painting my army leaders I'll have enough of an army assembled to do a small battle. I'm going to bother Rob about doing a game of Tyranids vs Imperial Guard. I should be done sometime next weekend. The rest of my army still needs to be bought. I've got such a huge list since Tyranids require a large horde army.
I've fallen into a trap of consumer hell and high markup on cheap plastic and paint! Help!
Rob is probably the best strategist out of all of us. He's been playing Warhammer for years. The few of us who have Warhammer experience have not been playing as long or as regularly as Rob. Chris is pretty intense, too. He's extremely clever. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say out of everyone in the league, I'm probably the worst strategist. I've been playing strategy games for about ten years. I have no Warhammer experience, though, so this is new to me.
So far, I've found I really enjoy painting minatures. It is really relaxing, and I can point to the really cool looking figures and say "I painted that." It's not something I get to do often. I'm painting a Tyranid army, which is an army made of insectoid monsters guided by a class of thinking bugs that keep the rest working as a hive. y halo thar Starship Troopers. Tyranid armies are actually called Hive Fleets, and come with names like Hive Fleet Juggernaught (bitch), or Hive Fleet Ragnarok. Big, scary sounding names. I'm going to call mine Hive Fleet Heinlein, after the author of Starship Troopers. Other ideas were Hive Fleet Stranger In A Strange Land and Hive Fleet Dina Meyer, but I felt they were a bit of a stretch. What I've noticed about the Games Workshop suggested color schemes is that they don't make the bugs look like actual bugs. With my army, I'm going with complete earth tones and looked at a lot of pictures of bugs for my colors. A lot of my army looks very much like a cross between beetles and mantids. For someone new to minature painting, I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. They're not the best painted minis out there, but I definitely think they're decent for a newbie. I'll post pics tonight.
Rob has armies for Imperial Guard, Chaos Marines and Orks. Chris is working on an Eldar army, Joe is borrowing our armies (I can't blame him, WH stuff is expensive), and I am working on a Tyranid army and thinking about starting a Tau army eventually.
As far as the Warhammer 40K universe itself, I've been reading up on it for a while. The setting is awesome, but mostly because it's standing on the shoulders of giants. It takes a lot of its ideas from some of the very best science fiction, and adds a bit of a fantasy element. It could probably be described as Dune having a baby with Starship Troopers, midwifed by The Forever War while Cthulhu watches in disgust. I got into a brief conversation with a nice guy at the Games Workshop store who was giving me tips on putting together my miniatures. We started talking about the influences on the setting. It occured to me that I should read The Forever War. It sounds like an awesome book.
Once I'm done painting my army leaders I'll have enough of an army assembled to do a small battle. I'm going to bother Rob about doing a game of Tyranids vs Imperial Guard. I should be done sometime next weekend. The rest of my army still needs to be bought. I've got such a huge list since Tyranids require a large horde army.
I've fallen into a trap of consumer hell and high markup on cheap plastic and paint! Help!