Let me introduce myself, and a campaign report

Hello readers! Eric here with my first article as an author here on the Battle Barn blog. Some of you may already know me from the barn. Others may recognize me from my own blog at The Wildrider Host. (yeah, it's a shameless plug but whatcha gonna do?)

So anyway how about a little bit of my gaming history. My sojourn into gaming started in high school when a couple of friends introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, that's right I started with D&D! It was also when I painted my first mini. A Balrog, which I painted with testers glossy paints, and thought I had done a grand job. When I showed it to my buddy he immediately handed it back to me and said it was too shiny. Looking back he was right, but it did sting. Anyway I played D&D for years.

So years later after some time spent playing Magic: The Gathering, and dabbling with other various role playing games I was introduced to a new game by a couple of buddies. One of them was the same guy who introduced me to D&D. Warhammer 40k was the new game of the month, or so it seemed. I resisted. I resisted hard! I did not want to learn a new game and spend hundreds (or lots and lots more as it turned out!) on little plastic and metal figures, rulebooks and paints. But these were my best friends and it was all they were doing. So I skimmed some of the codices, I checked out their minis and the cool paint jobs and before long I said Okay, I'm gonna play Eldar". Well they had actually given up trying to get me to play, so their jaws about hit the floor. Before I knew it they had set up a quick sample game for me. I was in control of a squad of Space Marines, my buddy a squad of Dark Eldar Warriors. I didn't really know what I was doing, but my guys kicked those pointy guys butts, and I was hooked.

That was back in 3rd ed. I played Eldar for several years. Then I built a Crimson Fists army, too. I also had units from several other codices, but never got around to making full armies. Then for whatever reason, right before 4th edition was released, my groups interest in the game just seemed to wane. I packed up my minis and didn't play for probably four years or so.

Then one night, almost two years ago I just got the itch to paint a miniature. Weird, since painting was probably my least favorite part of the hobby since I am not naturally an artistic guy. So I dug through the closed, pulled out some minis and started painting. When I told my buddy Mark about it (the same guy who got me into D&D and 40k, and come to think of it was there for my first game of Magic, Hmmm) he was practically giddy! Well I went out and picked up the Rulebook for 5th edition, the current Eldar Codex and I was off and running again.

About a year ago I was starting to get the itch for a new army. The Blood Angels book was the hot new item, but I wasn't really interested in it. A friend of mine though has a BA army, and I was playing around with list ideas trying to help him sort out all of the new options available to him. While doing so I just kept saying "man, this list sounds fun" over and over again. Well, I decided to give one a try. In the second round of 'Ard Boyz no less. Well, I was hooked! The only problem was I already had an all red army and didn't want another red army. Then I saw the Knights of Blood and their snippet of fluff in the codex, and I was off and running. I know have more points of KoB than I care to think about!

Well, that's pretty much my story in brief (if you can call that brief!) So fast forward to today. I am now a member out at the Battle Barn. I have made several new friends, and have had tons of fun games.

Out at the barn we have recently started a campaign. The Battle for Kathal. This is a pretty loosely formatted campaign where each player builds a hero who gains extra stats and abilities throughout the course of the campaign. In each battle your army either fights for Good or Evil. For the most part Imperial armies are good, Chaos is Evil and the Xenos armies run the gamut in between. If two armies of the same 'alignment' are playing each other they must determine who is good and evil before the game. Winning games earns points for your side and at each stage of the game the team that is ahead gains benefits that help them out in games.

Well we just finished up stage one of the campaign. Evil has won phase one. As a result anyone who plays as Evil in phase two will gain a +1 to reserve rolls. I have mostly been playing as evil up to this point, due to most of my opponents being Imperial armies and the Knights of Blood having fluff that the High Lords of Terra have declared them renegade. I'm going to laugh when I only play Xenos and Chaos armies and don't benefit from the bonus. LOL!

So anyways i'm going to close this with a quote from one of the greatest villians in movie history, Lord Helmet!

'Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb!"