My Secret Addiction! Warhammer!
I am finally ready to address this publicly... I can't get enough of Warhammer! Mingled in with my work, excessive time outdoors, boating, model railway building, YouTubing and sleeping... there is another huge presence in my life: Warhammer 40K!
Prohibitively expensive and exceptionally time consuming, Warhammer has made a deep impact on my life since the start of the year, when a sweet, young, innocent Dan Brown went into a shop in Chester and emerged with three figures and a few paints as a starter set. Six months on, life has never been the same!
Just like my railway modelling, there is something incredibly calming and satisfying in sitting down during the evening and spending a few hours working on a figure. The concentration, peace and calm are a tonic in the increasingly hectic, ten second attention span demanding world that is pumped out of our phones and computers.
There is something special, maybe even old fashioned in actually sitting down to work on a physical thing in the real world. There is also a compulsive element to the mindbogglingly huge array of armies and units that Games Workshop create and sell. Weekly releases of new items, dozens and dozens of books, both rule books for the game and fiction that adds to the extraordinary deep lore that decades of world building has created. All leads to a hobby that some people have been invested in for most of their lives.
I can remember trying briefly to get into Warhammer as a kid, maybe around age 12-13, and seeing my friends tiny little warriors being carefully unwrapped in the school library. I just couldn't quite understand how any of the actual tabletop game worked, so (maybe luckily) I never got into it at a young age. Now I am in my mid-thirties, I have sat down with a starter set and a beginners rule book... and still the full tabletop game seems impenetrable to me!
Luckily I have stumbled onto Warhammer 40K Kill Team, a much simpler smaller scale game, but one that still has a level of depth and complexity that I didn't think possible in a dice based game.
A while ago I posted a video of my thoughts as a starter in the hobby, and in short it goes like this: The models are amazing, the lore is amazing, but I feel about 50 years of experience short of actually being able to field a full army. Six months on, I broadly feel the same, only with an even greater appreciation of the dedication and skill that goes into some people's paint jobs.
Anyway, before I go off on a huge tangent about how even painting the simple scrap piles below turned into an afternoon long project, which became a team effort when my other half had to go to a model shop to buy one tiny pot of paint.... anyway... I can feel the tangent starting so I will sign off quickly!
Keep it hammer-worthy,
Keep it interesting,
Farewell,
Dan
(Want more Dan Brown? Take a look at my boat life books HERE, and my three YouTube Channels; HERE, HERE & HERE!)