Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Welcome! and About Me: Extended Edition



                                  Welcome, one and all, to Tainted by Xenos. Tainted by Xenos will be a blog focused on the alien races of the  40k universe, and just generally anything I feel like talking about. First off, I would like to say that I am not a self-proclaimed expert on anything, and as with anything, you should judge my advice, tips, and opinions with your own judgments. Please feel free to post any questions, comments, or criticisms. If you have any ideas or articles you would like to see please let me know.
              Today's post happened by accident. I was writing the "About me" page and got a tad long winded and basically told a history of almost my entire war gaming past. Sadly my long rant will not fit on the "About Me" page. Since I'm not one to throw stuff away, I decided to  post it here. It is a tad long winded and  if you are not interested in such things I suggest you stop reading here and, once again, welcome to Tainted by Xenos. If you are interested please continue.....

As you could guess, My name is Steven, but everyone calls me Stevo. I am 24 years old and live in Tennessee USA. I have been married for 3 1/2 years to my beautiful wife, Kathleen a.k.a "The Wiff" She has always been very supportive of my hobby, though I have never been able to get her hooked on it in the last 6 1/2 years of trying, but hey, there is still hope ;)
I started playing 40k around 3rd edition.I was brought into the hobby as a young kid by my long time friend and fellow blogger, The Griz. His blog address is ifitwearspowerarmor.blogspot.com. Check it out if you get a chance.
      The first army I ever considered playing was Tau, mostly because they were new and that just happened to be the issue of white dwarf I picked up first.  That is, until I visited the website and saw the necrons. I have always liked my Sci-fi a little on the dark side and the necrons were a perfect fit for me. Evil robotic space zombie skeleton warriors with self repair abilites? Yes, please!
    I continued playing necrons for many years, all through 3rd, 4th, and even into 5th ed. My gaming group consisted mostly of me, the Griz, and my now brother-in-law, K-berg.(Yes, I did marry my best friends little sister. Don't judge me! She is hot!) The Griz played Ultramarines and K-berg played Tau. I would also say that I was the one who got our gaming group into the tournament scene. Playing Necrons, I had much success. I thought this warhammer thing was easy. I remember how many people said my army was overpowered. I just shrugged it off as people being sore losers. It wasn't till later in 5th edition I saw how powerful they really were. I guess you don't truly appreciate something until its gone.
      Midway through 4th edition, i caught the green fever and bought my first orks. I didn't buy to much. Just some boyz and a looted bassie. I don't know if ya'll remember how the rumor mill work back then, but about that time ork, DE, and spacewolves were gonna get a codex any month now. I even built trukks out of legos. A year and a half later, im still using this crap, playing speed freeks. I don't know if any of you played speed freeks in 4th ed. so let me explain it to you. Trukk blows up, wounding everything inside on a 4+: the unit deploys just outside the crater it just made, meaning no cover save: the unit is autopinned due to the entangled special rule. Needless to say, K-berg brutally, mercilessly slaughtered my orks, always. It was sad times. But then the new codex came out, and gave me new models, new rules, and more importantly, a chance to win. I was so happy. I was like, "wow now I have two unstoppable armies". Alas it was not so.
      Six months later they came out with 5th ed. I was very happy with it. My orks got even better. A month after its release, there was a big tournament at DiceHead Games in Clevland TN. The orks were not near painted, so I brought the 'crons. Up until that point, I had never phased out in tournament play, and rarely had a losing record. I lost all three games that day, and phased twice, once on turn 3. I had always played a very defensive necron list and that day I learned the hard way what had become of my beloved 'crons.
        Since that day, my orks have been my primary army. It took me roughly 2.5 years to paint and get right, but I finally have my ork army where I am happy with it. I have had lots of success with them, but not near the success I had with my necrons.
      I got married, just before the orks got their new codex. We moved to Cookeville TN to attend TTU. As fate would have it the Griz and K-berg did the same. We found a link on GW's website for a local gaming club. We emailed them and that is how we met up with good ol' Dan. Dan is older guy is his late 30's. Turns out the gaming club met in a shed in his back yard. That shed had one, 8'X4' table in it and got really crammed with it and about 6 guys in it. Dan was a very welcoming, friendly guy, but above all, Dan had a dream. His dream was to build a huge place, with room for plenty of tables and terrain so that many people could come and play 40k and experience the hobby. I thought that was alot of time and financial responsibility for one guy to take on himself, but if he was willing to do it, I was willing to help and so was everyone else in the club. After years of work, Dan finally completed his Dream. Dan completed and opened the Cookeville Battle Barn last summer. Since then, the Barn has hosted many tournaments were people from all over Tennessee have come to play and have fun, as well as been open weekly on Saturdays for open gaming. For more info on the Battle Barn you can visit their website: www.cookevillebattlebarn.com

     The Dark Eldar Codex was release approximately 3 months ago. I have always like the fluff and idea of Dark Eldar, but the models were so butt-ugly I never wanted to play them. With the new models and rules, and with my ork army being complete, I decided it was now time to start my Dark eldar army and solidify myself as "The Xenos Guy"

No comments:

Post a Comment