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

9 comments:

Cannonfodder said...

Nice- hope to read more of you soon.

Michael said...

Thanks Cannon, it's always nice to see you around. Grats by the way on that last tourney you posted about, it was a good showing for you.

I have some articles in the works about my current army list and where it is headed.

Stay tuned!

Unknown said...

Always good to see new players getting involved in the community, and as I've said before, I love hearing other peoples opinions of the hobby/game, it's one of the best ways to get ideas (hopefully without just outright stealing them) and gives people more to think about. Welcome and can't wait to hear what you've got for us:)

Ysambart said...

I like the tiled floor effect on Tycho. Very effective. It gives a "marching through the halls of the Duke of Urbino" feel.

Michael said...

Thanks for the comments.

The tiled floor came out decent enough. I would need to practice it more until I get it down.

And hopefully my thoughts will get the creative juices going for the whole Blood Angels community. It will only benefit us all.

i am jbarket said...

Always glad to read more about my beloved BA.

Here's to hoping you play a more aggressive list than Jawa these days. I'm too impatient to sit back and shoot, haha.

Cannonfodder said...

Michael, you noticved? Funny- yeah it was my debut with Bloodangels and Jawaballs wouldn't let it count most likely since they weren't red. But I plan on painting a proper red army now that I have licked blood. Show some pics here as well.

Jawaballs said...

Haha Cannonfodder, if I remember right it was a red painting contest! :)

And if you guys want to see aggressive, wait until my Dark Eldar hit the tables...

Michael said...

As far as agressive goes, I suppose it depends on your definition.

But I'd say my army isn't quite so shooty as Jawaballs'. Mine tends to drop right in your face, and is headed more that way each time I play it.

One of my posts coming up will be an evolution of my painting. From my first LotR Moria Goblin to my latest Space Marine. I also need to get a pic of all my painted stuff together. Moral of the story, pics will come, I just need to figure out how to photograph them well. That's another post altogether, lol.

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