Let's Do This Thing . . .

Greetings and salutations all! This is Michael, self-proclaimed Captain of the 8th. Jawaballs, in his infinite wisdom, has invited me on as a new contributor for all things Blood Angels.

I began my GW habit back in '03 when my nerd-loving wife bought me some Lord of the Rings models for Christmas. And bless her soul, she even built me a gaming board to boot. If your significant other will go to "Roy's Train World" for you then it has to be true love right? Suffice it to say, I was immediately hooked. I loved the modeling, the painting, and the strategy involved in the game.

Grad school then took me away from home, and the brothers I played plastic toy soldiers with. No one played LotR at the game store so I jumped into 40k. It was the start of 5th ed, and a whole new world to me.


I found an old Blood Angels standard bearer model for 6 bucks at the game store. (here he is painted, and per my usual, unbased)



Another $6 Tycho model soon followed. (this model went into a painting competition, and I got second place, for the record, I was jipped)




And my first army was chosen. The internet inevitably brought me here when I started looking for advice for 40k and Blood Angels specifically. I've been hanging out here ever since. But Blood Angels didn't stay my only army for long. The siren song of the Tau railgun was too much, and made me start a small army for them. It's only about 1500 points soaking wet, and only comes out to play on occasion. I blame Old Shatterhands and his blog for that detour from the Imperium.

I'd consider myself the average 40k player/hobbyist. I like to do it all, but don't do any of it spectacularly well. I love to paint and have won a few local painting competitions, the result of being a little fish in an even littler pond. As a pat on the back I did place fourth in the painting competition Jawaballs put on about a year ago, but I'm no Golden Daemon winner. I like to convert models, but all I do is simple swaps with maybe a little greenstuff. I love the mental exercise of list building and the thrill of competition, but I have only played in one tournament. I enjoy making tough lists and going toe to toe with a like minded person, but real life keeps seizing the initiative and preventing me from playing in tournaments.

I will give painting and modeling advice, for what it is worth. We'll discuss list building and army evolution, along with tactics or deployment strategies. We can take this journey together, improving our painting, modeling, and hopefully our game.

It's going to be a fun ride!

Michael, Captain of the 8th and newest game nerd on the block.

As you can see folks, I put a lot of thought into finding guys who could keep in line with my blog and offer up some great stuff. When I put out the call for contributers, I literally got dozens of guys who submitted stuff. Picking just a few was tough. But I think that Michael is a great example of the Average guy doing above average work.  I think more than any thing else, that is what my blog and videos are about and you all can relate. Can't wait to see more.


Jawaballs