Introduction

I got to thinking that I ought to do a post that tells a bit of who I am as a gamer and so on and so forth.  I'm a single male just shy of hitting 40 years of age.  I got into Warhammer 40K in it's epic form briefly in college in the mid 90s.  During that time frame I also enjoyed DnD, reading Cyberpunk and BattleTech source books since I was intrigued by the worlds but had no one else into those systems (part of the downside of being in rural east Tennessee).

Nice place to live, but good luck finding a game store

Then just at the tail end of 3rd Edition 40K, I got on with my current employer and hooked up with some fellows who were starting into 40K.  My first army was Black Templars though I played them occasionally as regular marines as well in 4th Edition.  Back then my chapter was Sturmswalbe which came from the book "War Birds" by R. M. Meluch, though the small bit of fluff I had for them is long gone.  They were a horrible color scheme of flat black, battleship grey, and bright yellow.  They also had quite a few Tau bits added to them which was my first attempts at converting.  We also played Fantasy some off and on, and I had brief armies of Empire and Dark Elves, but never really enjoyed Fantasy the way I do 40K.

As 4th Edition progressed, I was drawn to Tau and had some early difficulties getting in a win with them.  After I found a great site called Advanced Tau Tactica (which is still around and is an EXCELLENT forum for Tau players and those interested in Tau), I soon was meched up and had nothing in my army that couldn't move 12 inches a turn which lead to a more aggressive mobile style of play.  I had a lot of fun and victories in that stretch, but 5th Edition really hurt the way the Tau played so I sold them off and went back to my Marines.

My best eBuy so far, a $61 painted Baneblade

This was the time frame where I found myself with more disposable income and began to hit eBay regularly looking for deals.  With the AoBR set being so popular to be broken up and sold on eBay, my tactical marines, dreadnoughts, and terminators started multiplying.  Along with my marines which were starting to take shape as the chapter they are now, I also got a good size Tyranid army going.  It was built around spore podding Zoans and terms with devourers, then the outflanking genestealers, deep striking Trygon Primes, a real hard hitting alpha strike army.  Unfortunately 6th Edition gutted the Nids the way I played them and they didn't see a lot of playtime and were eventually traded away for more marines.

The last few years I've also played some Mordheim off and on as it wanes and waxes in popularity with my local game group.  And I've collected some Battlefleet Gothic marine ships just in case I manage to get someone to teach me that system as well.  So currently my only 40K army is my Lions of Harlech, but I've finally got hooked up with some others who are letting me finally get into some other interesting game systems.  Thus I'm working on assembling a force of the Eridani Light Horse for BattleTech which I've had some luck with playing against Cheef, Hive Angel, and Screech.  And now at Ni's game shop I've been introduced to Infinity and have a small starter force of Highlanders from Ariadna.

As a gamer, I not only like a good game system that I can enjoy casually with good friends (which I've been lucky to do quite a bit the last few years), but I like making my force "fit" in the system as a whole.  I enjoy not only coming up with a unit's history of victories and losses, but also how it connects to the game's universe as a whole.  That led to all the fluff that's slowly being posted in this blog as well as the couple pages of fluff for my new Ariadna and the reconditioning of the fluff that Murl gifted me with for the ELH. (and that mainly consisted of new name for the people in the unit, because FASA was downright horrid when it came to line troopers name to fill in the spaces)

So that's where I am now, roughly 8 companies of marines for my Lions of Harlech (with attachments for I'm guessing in the neighborhood of 30,000 points or so), about 200 points of Ariadna Highlanders, a couple Morheim bands, and roughly a Battalion of ELH.  And still trying to come up with new fluff or ideas to work into my fluff that I've overlooked.