IN THE BEGINNING...

Welcome fair traveller to the Hobby Tavern. A place for me to share my hobby progress, ideas, hopes and dreams. A place of merriment and friendship. The aim of this blog is to try to organise my racing thoughts, journal my progress and connect with the online community in some way. 

So I guess I'll start by telling you a little about me. I live in Australia, am rapidly approaching 40, work in a board game store and have recently uprooted my life to move cities and study palaeontology. I've basically hobbied my whole life and painting minis is probably my favourite thing in the world. 

When I was 10 I stumbled across Warhammer Fantasy and was immediately hooked. I started with Dark Elves because, well let's face it, Witch Elves can certainly intrigue a 10 year old boy. And I fell in love with them. It's funny, a bit of the chicken and the egg type thing, but I don't know if there was something in me pulling me towards Dark Elves and wanting to be part of the "Bad Guys" or, because I had Dark Elves, I was exposed to being a "Bad Guy" and learned to love it. Either way, nearly 30 years later I've rarely trod the "Good Guy" path (in regards to Warhammer). 

Where it all began

My first day of high school was scary. I was the only kid from my primary school to go to this new school and literally knew no one. I remember my first English class we had to sit in a circle, introduce ourselves and say something about us. "My name is Jim" I stammered when it was my turn "And I play Warhammer". The next person introduced themselves and the cycle continued. About halfway through another boy introduced himself "My name is David. And I play Warhammer too." Our eyes locked! Afterwards I approached him and of all the armies he could have collected, of course it was the Dark Elves most hated rivals, the High Elves. Perfection! We soon became best mates and still are to this day. He introduced me to 2 other kids who also played, Jerry (Wood Elves) and Richy (Chaos) and we formed a little Warhammer gang and basically spoke about nothing else. 

The Butterfly Effect

Then came THE MOMENT. It was about a year later and Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition had just come out. And of course, the box set with the new rule books and two armies. Empire and Orcs. Richy and I decided to split the box and each take an army but the trouble was we both wanted Empire. It wasn't even that we both liked Empire all that much, it was more that we both thought Orcs were pretty lame. So we decided to Rock, Paper, Scissors for it and lo and behold I win. "YES!!!" But then I look over at Richy and he looked so sad, and my stupid weak heart couldn't take it. So I was like "Fine, you take the Empire, I'll take the Orcs." And it's funny, there are moments in life that don't seem to be big at the time. Just these little events that seem insignificant but are actually the first of the dominos to fall that can completely alter your life. And little Jim deciding to take the Orcs was certainly one of them. I completely fell in love with Orcs and Goblins. They went from being these idiots of the warhammer world to these IDIOTS!!! of the warhammer world. I loved their whacky contraptions, crazy magic. in-fighting, models, monsters, characters and everything else. But most of all I loved their brutality. The moments in games where opponents realise "This is too much to deal with" or "what can men do against such reckless hate?" 

Ere' We Go!!!

So as time rolled on and I grew into a young man my collection grew too. I dabbled with Vampire Counts, Lizardmen (about as close to Good Guys as I ever got) and Warriors of Chaos. But Orcs were usually my go to army. I met two brothers, Laurie and Dan who also fell head over heels for warhammer and joined our little posse, adding Beastmen, Daemons and Empire into the mix. I also started playing a lot of DnD and reconnected with a primary school friend Will (Wood Elves, High Elves, Dwarfs - goody little two shoes player). A new guy, Anton, joined our DnD group and we all became fast friends. And with Anton came 40k. And boy oh boy did we all get into it. 

Naturally my first army was Orks (with a K this time) but I also built a Necron army too. And the same thing happened, we all picked armies and just played and played and played. It was constant, beers in the garage and someone playing someone on the table tennis table. Late night DnD games with 40k and fantasy sprinkled in between. And the variety was rich, we had Orks, Necrons, Space Marines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines and Daemons. Not to mention everything else; Magic the gathering, poker, board games, Malifaux, X-Wing, beers, joints and System of a Down. It was potentially the best time of my life. Me, Anton, Dan and Will were getting stuck back into Fantasy, I was working on Warriors and V.C when the news came through that GW were scrapping the game. At the time I didn't really see it for what it was, but much like the End Times had come for the folk of the Warhammer Fantasy World, the End Times had come for our gaming group too...

Archaon, Lord of the End Times

So here's what I think happened. Firstly, we all grew up a little. People had jobs and partners and all that. We can't be 22 year olds playing in a friends garage forever (unfortunately). So the group began swaying. And then once fantasy was gone all we had was 40k. And 40k was going crazy. If you've ever played 7th ed you'll know what I mean. Games required more models and the meta moved so fast. Playing 40k can leave a bad taste in your mouth too, often there are games where you basically get to do nothing and your opponent steam rolls because they happened to go first. But what I think really killed off 40k for a lot of people was us. The players... See, we grew up in a wargamming setting where, your army was your army, your book was your book. It would change once per edition (if you were lucky) and it was up to YOU to try and make the list work. But these days (god I sound like an old man) it's all right there on Youtube. You want to beat Tyranids? There's videos about it. You want to know what load out to give your squad? There's videos about it. The ease of the "perfect" list is ridiculous. And I'm not saying you're a bad person for looking up this stuff, hell, I do it all the time, but it removes the variety from the game. It basically turns one of the greatest games ever into a ludicrously expensive game of rock, paper, scissors. 

So the gaming group sort of fell away. I'd play sometimes but most people weren't really interested. I tried dipping my toes into AoS but it never really grabbed me (or any of my friends) the way 40k or Fantasy did. I really tried to keep the 40k heartbeat going, even just for myself. I played a fair bit in 8th, built a Deathguard army and went to some tournaments but it very much felt like flogging a dead horse. It just blew out into this way too competitive game, which is fine, I know some people like that. But for me it's always been about telling stories and the rule of cool and all that. I very nearly threw the towel in for good during 9th. It was a particularly shitty time for me, I was recovering from surgery (cancer, big whoop, wanna fight about it?), and went to this tournament of 136 players. I ended up coming 136th, and though I admit I'm not a great player, I'm certainly not the worst. It was just because I'd brought off meta stuff and got completely pounded, game after game over a 2 day event. Pretty much for trying basically anything other than the Ork net list. It sucked. It still sucks. Like a morgul blade that wound will never heal properly. And so I grieved, not for myself but for the game. I missed the lols and hilarity and joy it used to inspire. Now it's just stress and concentration and tactical decisions. Yuck. So over the last couple of years I've barely played. I've painted HEAPS but rarely play. And I thought I'd reached the end of the road. A place to lay down my sword and shield and watch the sky, one last time. The burden was too heavy, the pain too much. I could no longer recall the tastes of strawberries. I was done, only rest now... But then, a decade after the world came crashing down....

THE OLD WORLD IS BACK!

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I'd been burned too many times to believe in hope. I was worried that the whole meta thing will happen to Old World like it had in 40k. And I'm sure it will a little, but I think there's 2 things stopping it getting out of hand. 1, There's no hellfire shooting phase like there is in 40k, so you're army isn't going to just melt turn one and 2, a lot of the players seem to be 40k refugees. People like myself that have seen what's happened and want to get away from it. I've been playing it and it's great, the community is really growing too which is lovely. It's been so nice to see everyone's work, models ranked up again with banners and such. So I've been painting like mad, got myself a Warriors of Chaos Nurgle army, got me my Orcs and Goblins (because of course), I'm even planning a retro Lizardmen army, and from where it all began, I have my beloved Dark Elves on the horizon. So for the first time in a long time I feel hope for my hobby. And I guess it's inspired me to blog about it. Document the journey and whatnot. So please feel free to join my for the ride and tell me about your own journeys through the brushes and dice. 

Your friend in the Tavern,

Jim x