Kill Team: Re-entering a hobby

I like the basic principle of table top strategy a lot. As a youth, I had a Warhammer-army of dark elves. They sucked and I only ever played against my best friend who first had a high elf army, later an orcish one. 2000 points were our usual match size. I had spent a considerable part of my disposable money on the hobby over the course of about two years, roughly age 13-15. I was in the process of getting my troops painted so I could participate in 1500-point-tournaments at our local hobby place. Then GW decided to reboot the dark elves, making all my models worthless.



In my early 20s I played several games of BrikWars, some of them epic battles, some small skirmishes. I loved that system and the fact that I had (and still have, although I gave it to my son) tons of Legos meant that I could build up three fully functioning armies each in their own colour scheme. I still think up cool new units when I can't sleep at night, to distract me from the troubles of the life of a responsible adult.

A yukikoma combat support bot and an exotrooper in a Mk.5 heavy power armour.

Over the years I have often invented my own tabletop strategy games as well. I made a small squad tactics game to be played with Lego technics figures and guns I crafted for these guys from paper and GW-paint. I made small tank-games. I made games to be played with little figures cut out from paper.

Now I am intending to go back into Warhammer. 40k, to be specific. I used to have a scant few dark eldar in my youth, trying to branch out my fantasy-army into the future. They sucked so hard that my best buddy's space marines probably had their only casualties from laughing so hard.

I have neither the time nor can I justify spending much money on an actual full scale army. So my buddy and former roommate Justin convinced me to try Kill Team. As I have recently read a few 40k-novels (thanks to Patrick S), I like the underdog crew that is the Astartes Militarum, the Imperial Guard. Justin has Space Marines, which I fucking hate and want to kill on principle. So my crew is going to be a detachment of traitor guardsmen. You know, the guys who die like flies to Space Marines. Should I actually pull a victory from those odds, it will be oh so sweet...

In order to save cost, I decided to forego official GW minis and convert figurines from Bolt Action, a rival system of WWII-minis. As my team is going to be traitor guard, I have little obligation to make them look completely uniform so I can take base minis from different armies. I think it will be a mix of German, Russian, British and Japanese minis. Give (some of) them different guns and you're good to go, basically. I can get a 12 headed kill team for les than 40 Euros that way.

While I really enjoy statting out an army and thinking up backstories for them, I never did like painting the minis. That part of the hobby has always been just the means to an end for me and it used to show in the figures I had as a teenager. Luckily, Justin really enjoys that part so he'll just do it for me. And he is good at it too, even won some online competitions with his m'rines. I think within a few months I'll have my squad ready to take on these armored assholes. Looking forward to it.

I have made up an entire backstory for my guys (and gals), who are part of a civilization that has just been kicked out of the Imperium due to a clerical error. They had to make up their own counter emperor too because, let's face it, people in that kind of society need their god. We'll see how this project works out. If well, then there will probably be battle reports in this blog.