Introducing Myself

 Hello gentle reader, and thank you for taking the time to come to my blog. I thought it would be fun to start a blog about playing Dark Angels, to help me engage with the hobby when I can't play or paint. The release of 10th edition has left me with thoughts about the current state of the Dark Angels army I'd like to express, so I thought I could do that here.

My journey into 40K started about 20 years ago. My godson, who was in grade school at the time, got into playing Mage Knight, so I started playing as well. I played a few games with a friend, who had been playing 40K since 2nd edition. It wasn't the first time I'd been exposed to the game, but it was this friend who got me started playing.

40K clicked with me on a number of levels. Obviously, I enjoyed playing games of all sorts. I was already an RPG, CCG, and video game playing nerd, so this was a fairly natural outgrowth. I had built and painted models when I was younger, but as you couldn't do anything with them afterwards, I lost interest in that hobby. Being able to build and paint models for a game I could later play with those models made the hobby more rewarding than having them just gather dust on my shelf. Finally, the lore of 40K hooked me into the setting. It's big and bombastic and can be appreciated on a number of levels. So, why the Dark Angels? If I'm being honest, it's probably because the friend who got me into the hobby was playing Dark Angels, and in 3rd edition they could take a plasma cannon in their Tactical Squads, which at the time was kind of a big deal. I got my start playing a gunline list with a lot of little Tactical Squads and Devastator Squads, and plasna cannons could do a number on bunched up MEQs. I was a pretty infrequent player for much of 3rd - 7th editions, becoming more active when I helped get a group of LARPing friends interested in the hobby. I started attending tournaments with some frequency in 8th edition, and attended more regularly in 9th. These days, i think I get in most of my games at local RTTs. I do try and arrange for other games, but it's a little challenging when you live in a rural area. Still, I am optimistic about the future, so hopefully I can bring some interesting observations about the game and the Dark Angels to my blog.