JordanGreywolf

I'm definitely into model-making. I'm no pro by any means, but it's still fun.

I got started in the olden days by my mom's interest in checking out garage sales, and I would tag along and get some very cheap but broken or incomplete toy, and I had this wild idea in my head that with a little work I could fix it, make replacements for the broken pieces, etc. My dad encouraged me, allowing me to use his tools (initially with supervision of course), and various methods, most of which couldn't possibly get the exact results I wanted (I couldn't very well create die-cast or plastic parts from scratch) -- but I still learned a lot.

Much later on, I discovered the phenomenon of miniatures wargames, and the idea of running tabletop RPGs with miniatures and scenery to help set the scene. A local comics shop had a Warhammer Fantasy league, but at the time there were a couple of Milton Bradley/Games Workshop cooperative ventures in the US, in the form of "Battle Masters" and "HeroQuest," and by the store's rules, any "Games Workshop" miniatures were legitimate for regular troops, but they were very particular that the specific minis had to be used for the "heroes." I found that it was possible to write to MB to order spare sprues of the Battle Masters or HeroQuest minis, and it was far cheaper than getting the equivalent in pewter from Citadel -- though it was much harder back then to get suitable "slottabases" to base them on.

My army builds were terrible. I would field an Imperial army with halberdiers, knights on horseback, archers, cannons and crew, and the requisite mage, and somehow, multiple times I was "skunked" - lost without scoring a single casualty on the enemy. Eventually I fared slightly better, but ultimately I never got to chalk up a single win in that "tournament."

I eventually scored a used copy of Advanced HeroQuest -- initially with the crazy idea of making a skaven army -- and found that the game was fun in its own right. I branched out from there to running lots of RPGs, but a huge part of it has been the fun in trying to make "dungeon tiles" and props of all sorts to help set the scene for the game. I can't say that I'm a very good GM, but I'm at least tolerable enough that I've got players who keep showing up -- and I have loads of fun kit-bashing and painting the minis, both for myself, and for my friends.