China City Blues

Intro

"The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." - William Gibson Neuromancer

The above is an extract from William Gibson's Neuromancer. Neuromancer is the first book in the sprawl series and symbolises one of the greatest starts to a story I have ever read. I make it a point to reread this book every few years as the impact it has had on my personal tastes can not be undervalued.

I start with this extract for two reasons; to give you all a bit of background about myself and secondly to symbolise what will hopefully be a great start to a more elaborate blog of my hobby journey. 

I have been inspired to commit to this blog by other awesome people from our community who have either been running amazing blogs for quite some time or have just started on this amazing journey. 

Below are some of the blogs I have been following:

• thevvizardstower
• itswhatevan
  
• obelisks-shadow
  
• gardensofhecate
  
• portcullisgames
  
• hobbydungeon
  
• garderobeprivy
  
• betweenthebolterandme
  

Who

I am a father and husband, one who is very lucky and recieves alot of support and allowances for this crazy hobby we all devote so much time to. As many of us do I have a day time job which is far removed from anything traditionally creative. So far this year has been extremely tough at work and without my amazing family, the creative outlet of making tiny people, realising ideas and dreams, and being and active part of this awesome community it would have been much tougher.

I dabbled with magic the gathering and warhammer as a child however the lack of knowing what the fuck I was doing and people to not know what I was doing with prevented these interests from blossoming. My wife bought me a box of zombicide (around the time of the start of the walking dead (zombies are cool)) which we played with but never did anything with and one day in I want to say winter of 2019 I decided to pull these down from the shelf and try painting them. I think I had discovered Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse by the extremely talented Ash Baker (check out his youtube channel GuerrillaMiniatureGames).

After having a pretty awful attempt at painting these I quickly moved on to games workshop models and received a Kill team starte set for christmas. Even at this early stage into my hobby journey I discovered the joys of  kitbashing while simultaniously realising that rules where not all written equally.

My wife and I continued down this journey for about a year utilising the starbreach rule set by Elijah M. Kellog and building warbands to suit that agnostic rules set. Then came another break (I think I started running and playing magic the gathering).

Luckily this one wasn't as long and ended in the winter of 2023. As opposed to my original tact of building and painting to game I took a different approach and did it purely for the joy of building and painting. Over the last few years this approach has developed further. 

In autumn of 2023 I discovered the concept of Inq28 and have subsequently spiralled down the bottomless rabbit hole of this side of the hobby. 

Zombies from Zombicide - First painted models

Some kind of smash captain - First Kitbash

One of the first miniatures after picking up the hobby again

A Gnarl for the game "The Weald"

What

I believe my entries will be a mixture of build progress, both terrain and models, possible guides on how I have created the end results and most importantly lore! Having the ability to capture extended lore for the models I create and games I play is something I am very much looking forward to sharing. I will try to organise my posts as best I can but naturally I am not an organised person. 

I may also work on providing a back catalogue of my work so as to capture all of the images, lore and ideas in one place.

When

Right now I am writing this intro as I sit in my busy kitchen, my children singing and playing, my wife asking me what is so interesting on my phone and my ferret snacking (no clue where the cat is) however my goal is to update at least once a week on a Saturday morning. I write this now mainly to hold myself accountable.

Where

Right here.

Why

One of the main attractions of a blog as opposed to social media is that as I write this I know there is no intended or guaranteed audience, and to that point this will act more as a journal for myself, a record of what I have achieved. 

The flexibility of being able to write more extensively and provide more insight to my working, my thoughts and my challenges along with ridding myself of the urge to add a million # to a post are all advantages. 

As I've started to create this blog and first post I have also realised that the creation and curation process itself will be somewhat enjoyable :)

Out

If you have enjoyed my ramblings so far, I appluad you and your perseverence.