Friday, March 28, 2008

Monstro- A brief history of madness

Q welcomed me the other day to the dark side because I'm playing chaos. That's funny.

  • 1988- See Warhamer 40k at DunDraCon at the Oakland Hilton. Began playing Orks.
  • 1988-1991- The great arms race builds up between me and the two marine players. By the time 1991 rolls around, the marine player has 6 dreadnoughts, hundreds of men, five rhinos and a predator.
  • 1991- Marine player goes into the army, sells me all of his miniatures for $100.
  • 1992-1994- I begin playing Slaanesh (because the book for Tzeentch and Nurgle is not yet out). Chaos rocks. My oppposition is an Eldar player and a Tyranid player.
  • 1994- Both of my opponents give up the game and hand me their armies. At this point I have an Ork army, a marine army, a chaos army, an Eldar army, and a Tyranid army (the Tyranid army began as a genesteeler chaos cult so I also have a squat army and all the khorne daemons). All armies contain at least fifty miniatures. Chaos and marines top out at about 250. Eldar include a squad of every aspect except Warp Spiders (which hadn't yet been invented).
  • 1997-2004- I stopped playing. During my hiatus, somehow, the genesteelers multiplied. I have during this time given away enough Orks to make an army and enough Tyranids to make an army. My god there are still more. During this time, GW discontinues Squats and Zoats. I still have yet to fully recover.
  • 2004- I begin playing again as Eldar. The only thing I lack is all the hover stuff. I buy a bunch of that. Including Nuadhu. I own Nuadhu. How pitiful is that?
  • 2005- I went through a little grey knight phase which I think included an entire guard army just in case. I don't know why I own so many damn guard. I have yet to ever play one of them. Around this same time I began to divide my chaos army in half--Undivided (The Pyre) and the old Slaanesh army (light blue and black). My space marines have ultimately settled down to Ultramarines, but as that constitutes about a 1/4 of them, I'm still contemplating making another marine army.
  • 2006- Tzeentch. It's hard not to own a Tzeentch army. You buy two squads, Ahriman, a squad of horrors, and a Lord of Change, what else do you need? I broke down and bought the Thousand Sons dreadnought and a couple of chaos predators, but I think at least one of the predators is going to be chaos undivided.
  • 2007-2008- While it is fun to own fifty f'ing armies, even when you play week after week, you settle into a routine. I go through phases as to what I want to play. Normally, it's either Eldar, Chaos, or Marines. I haven't played Orks in a LONG time, so I'm thinking of painting them up and bringing them back out. I like the new codex so we'll see. I daily fight the urge to own a necron army. If you look at my scenery, you will notice that it is the stuff I'm best at making.

Wrap up: I have too many damn miniatures and I'm not a fast painter. This week, I painted 8 genestealers and 8 noise marines. I haven't even made a dent. This is no longer a hobby, it's an albatross. I will be painting from now until doomsday. In a box somewhere I have 20 plague marines and a great unclean one. I'm sick.

2 comments:

Q said...

Well it seems that you fluctuate too much to come over to the dark side, so I guess I should have welcomed you to the grey side. I am right there with you on armies though. At some point it becomes an unbreakable addiction. I have a playable 2500 point version of every army but Necrons. I have been tempted several times but the prospect of dry-brushing that many troops makes me a little ill. My favorite right now seems to be my sisters. There is just something about the ladies that I find intoxicating.

Monstro D. Whale said...

I totally blame ebay. You go on looking for a Land Raider and you type in space marines and on the first minute with less than a minute left there's a squad of space wolf termies and you think, 'hey, I don't have any Space Wolf termies." It never occurs to you that you DON'T play space wolves or that you already have 50 other kinds of terminators. Next thing you know, you have a rune priest in terminator armor and you're cruising ebay looking for a couple of troop choices to round out the army.