The short version: Started painting in the late 80s (I still have some of the first gen GW paints to prove it). After adoring old GW, new school GW left a bad taste in my mouth, Malifaux got me to love the hobby again, and now I stick mostly to miniatures-agnostic fantasy and sci-fi rulesets because why can't my models work in multiple systems?
The long story: I decided to use a new handle for my minipainting-specific adventures, though I've been involved in the hobby off and on for decades.
First off, the name. There's an old collectible card game I played in the 90s called On the Edge. Still one of my favorite games ever, though admittedly a big part of that were the multiplayer games I played with college friends. It's still available from Atlas and one box of boosters will cover 3-4 players easily. Notify Grout is a minor character in the game, name supposedly taken from AOL trial CD initial passwords (which were two short words followed by random characters). Other characters, like Steno Topic, were also named this way.
Did I mention I like to go off on tangents a lot? Because I do. I also like to ramble and tell long stories.
Anyway, I started as a kid with Testors enamels and Ral Partha and a few Grenadier models. Probably killed some brain cells with them, even with "proper ventilation". I will put the pics up of that earliest work when I can get to those again as an inspiration to people new to the hobby- the paint jobs don't get much worse than those!
Despite my friends rarely wanting to play anything, I discovered Blood Bowl 2nd Edition (some of the best fluff ever, from the old days when Games Workshop didn't take themselves too seriously) and HeroQuest. There was something about the minis that just stuck with me.
College was better; got to play some Necromunda with some friends and had a great time. Discovered Warzone and tried to get into 40k using mostly Rogue Trader era Marines (because beakies are cooler). Once again, no one wanted to try Warzone, 40k got stale after a few games. I was in a deep depression after college for a while, and painting was one of the few things that kept me going.
Things got better and I lost interest in the hobby. Got into and out of the radio business, got into other hobbies, played way more video games, came back to it in 2008 after a bad breakup. I realized that Blood Bowl was more fun via the PC game as it kept track of everything for me. After meeting a couple of 40k nerds at a bar's karaoke night I decided to dig my old RT marines out and try to play 5th Edition.
...welp, that sucked. It sucked so bad I almost quit the hobby completely. Lots of reasons, but the underlying theme is that it really wasn't for me. Then I saw a pack of models that were a style I wasn't used to: the
1st Edition Malifaux Rasputina starter box (link goes to Gmorts Chaotica's pics). 'Tina was kind of a pin-up hottie but she also looked like she wasn't f---ing around, and she had a bunch of ice monsters with her, so I thought "why not? This is new."
Malifaux was awesome, even if it was heavy when the special rules came into play. I got enough people to join in that we played at least on occasion, and made some friends along the way at that store (I think the owner might be around here somewhere- since he closed he has been introducing college kids to old-school gaming goodness of multiple varieties, and loving every minute of it, which made me happy to hear). I have a lot of out of town and out of country friends to this day because of Malifaux, and isn't that the best part of a hobby anyway?
2nd Edition was even better...well, it was until the 3rd book came out. 3rd Edition seems to be a step forward and back- on one hand, the core rules are more streamlined than ever, with less stuff to have to remember. On the other hand, they aren't even attempting to balance anything, or even separate Masters into tier groups (easy, medium, challenging), so I left it behind.
Now I'm trying to play anything I can get someone to try with me. Mostly -Grave games lately, but I will get some Zona Alfa and Red Book of the Elf King in, as well as compare several fantasy warband/platoon scale games at some point (Saga: Age of Magic, Dragon Rampant, Of Gods and Mortals, Warlords of Erehwon, Clash of Spears, and perhaps Dux Bellorum and Wrath of Kings if I can get someone else to play it with my models). I like Kings of War but I dislike the hardcore tournament bent it has now, even though it means the game is way more successful than it likely would have been otherwise. I am interested in trying other Mantic games like Warpath: Firefight, Deadzone, and Vanguard (which I backed on Kickstarter but still haven't played).
Not a huge historicals guy, but I occasionally dip my toe in the water with ancients. I like Wargames Atlantic's Dark Age Irish models enough to think about doing a Saga army with them.
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December 07, 2024, 02:56:25 PM
