I was 4 years old when 40k first appeared in 1987, so it wasn't until the mid 90s that I actually took the plunge into the grim darkness of far future for the first time, but was hooked on the hobby pretty quickly. The first miniature I remember painting was a rather unfortunate metal Deathwing Terminator which was purchased from a wee model shop in a village on the south coast of England called Milford on Sea and slathered in thick dark green paint followed by thick white paint when someone told me that the Deathwing had bone white armour.
My true entry into the hobby though would be when I was given a box of miniatures and stack of White Dwarf magazines by a friend from school called Chris - he was clearing them out and I said I'd give them a home so they didn't go in the bin. I didn't really know what I had, but hours of poring over the White Dwarfs (which back then came with catalogue pages in the back of each issue) and I was starting to grasp not only what the models were, but how the universes they inhabited worked as well.
Like many folks, Warhammer 40,000 had a distinct appeal and it won out over Warhammer Fantasy as the game I began to 'get into', though I always kept a wee eye on what was going on in the World That Was and I remember being both thrilled and horrified while reading the story of how the citizens of Mordheim sealed their own fate at the hands of the emissary of the Three-Horned Rat leading to the birth of the Skaven race.
A few folks that I went to school with were into Warhammer as well (thanks for your patience Chris S and David K!) so I began playing the second edition of Warhammer 40,000 as well as trying out Blood Bowl and Space Hulk and collecting large armies of Space Marines (Space Wolves and Black Templars) and Imperial Guard (Catachans), though sadly none of these would survive the unkind ministrations of my step-father when I left home in my late teens. Towards the end of my first stint in the hobby, I remember buying several of the Inquisitor scale characters, with no idea that the game existed, I simply wanted to try painting something else and they looked really cool and packed with character.
When I left home I took about an eighteen month break from the hobby, though this might have been longer if it hadn't been for randomly stumbling upon a copy of Honour Guard from Dan Abnett's seminal Gaunt's Ghosts series while I was in Brighton assisting with the opening of a new Schuh retail store in around 2002. Reading the book catapulted me back towards the hobby and when I moved to Scotland a short time later, I jumped back in with both feet. I settled down in the Highlands, met a girl and had three wonderful children but due to a combination of factors, the relationship didn't work out and in late 2011 we separated. Around this time, I'd been frequenting the Bolter and Chainsword Forums for a couple of years or so where I met a few of the friends I still have to this day, It was also on the B&C that my love of trying to write to accompany my hobbying began to emerge (see: Horus Heresy Flash Fiction Retrospective for an example of some early scribblings).
When I painted the 25th anniversary miniature ten years ago, I had absolutely no idea how far off track things were about to go, but in the couple of years that followed, I made some decisions which while seeming to be right at the time, would prove to be incredibly unhealthy and culminated in me being homeless and stuck in a pretty helpless situation. It's been a long, hard decade of climbing back up, although as I sit writing this today with two of the kids happily playing in the house I live in with my wonderful fiancee having recently become Head of Strengthening Communities for the Inner Moray Firth, the work it's taken is beginning to pay off.
Through all of the last ten years, the hobby has been there as a (mostly) positive space and companion. I've been lucky to meet even more fantastic hobbyists both near and far. I've been able to travel to Horus Heresy Weekenders and Open Days and in 2018, I finally made the pilgrimage to Warhammer World for the first time, which was absolutely amazing. I've been four times now, but it never ceases to feel exciting to go and it's been fantastic to wander through the Exhibition spaces, seeing models and dioramas I marvelled over in White Dwarf when I was younger in person and meeting and speaking to fellow hobbyists 'where the magic happens'.
I haven't played 40k in a few years now, partly due to the local hobby scene having such a strong 30k slant but also because time and money aren't as free as they used to be and the current edition of the game seems to require both a large amount of books and a heavy mental load to play, which is a shame as Crusade looks like it could be really fun to play. Despite this, I still follow the universe, reading Bklack Library fiction set there, occasionally painting miniatures from the range and am looking to begin playing more Kill Team as it scratches the narrative itch for me, while requiring lower numbers of miniatures, books, space and time to play which makes it much more accessible. The War For the Eye and The War of the False Primarch are also set firmly in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and I plan to continue contributing to both projects as time allows.
It's a funny old world though, because as I drafted the bones of this post on the eve of the 35th anniversary of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Day a couple of weeks ago, I was travelling back to Milford on Sea for the first time in a long time to scatter my mother's ashes. She passed away in August which led to some rather ugly truths about her and other aspects of the past coming to light which left me questioning quite a lot of things I thought I knew and understood - including myself. It was a strange and entirely unintended overlap of events, travelling back to where something that has been largely positive started to lay someone that was largely negative to rest but it was helpful to be among my family again and for us to be able to focus on talking about good things for the most part, despite the circumstances.
When I got the 25th anniversary Crimson Fist out to take some new photos for this post, I noticed that I have quite a few Blood Angels Space Marines in my collection - this might be because rising from monstrous origins to become something noble but still flawed really resonates with me, or it could just be that I like painting red, though on balance I think it could be a mix of both.
I'm not sure whether there's any real meaning buried within all of this or not, but to wrap things up: here's to 35 years of 40k, here's to all the awesome people I've met through this amazing hobby and here's to what are hopefully a brighter ten years to come.
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