How farmpunk got into 40K

by: farmpunk

How did I get started with playing with pushing little metal dollies around the table and rolling dice?
Chambers made me do it.
It all started back on '05 (I think). Chambers and I knew each other through Church groups, and he told me about his favorite game, Warhammer40K.


I'd seen Warhammer and Warhammer 40K back in College, and in fact, bought a used copy of Blood Bowl in '95, and have a copy of the old Blood Bowl computer game somewhere as well. Warhammer and 40K both seemed a bit costly for a tightwad, poor college student back then, and the rules seemed a bit convoluted to me. I in typical fashion decided at the time to stick with Rolemaster and White Wolf roleplaying games.

I thought of myself as a Roleplayer. As a kid, I did sit down a few times to try to come up with better rules for games like Battleship, and Risk. I found them both to be lacking in strategy. In College, I did like GW models, but not enough to sink a few hundred bucks into it.

Eventually, I picked up Dawn of War like so many other people, and liked it. This was about the same time Chambers got me to move little plastic Space Marines around. I liked it, and Mrs. farmpunk thought I needed a hobby, since I'm not one to sit and idly watch TV, and hadn't yet begun winemaking.

I would have started Fantasy (if people in Champaign-Urbana regularly played), or War of the Ring (again, if people played. It only a skirmish game at the time), I thought about WarMachine (but it didn't quite capture my imagination), Confrontation didn't quite do it for me either (and the constanly released and updated rules were an annoyance).
Warhammer 40K it was. I found a group that captured my imagaination.... the INQUISITION.

It boiled down to the sleek, really cool Monks in power armor, or the Nuns with guns. Faith points sealed it for me. That, and I knew I could collect the 3 armies that interested me most, and use them all together: WitchHunters, DaemonHunters, and Imperial Guard. I've not got a very good handle of how much stuff I own, but I can field quite a bit of all 3 armies, but the IG is mostly infantry. All of the models I own are metal, except tanks. Primarily because I bought most of my stuff second hand from people getting out of 40K.

I lost about my first half-dozen or more games, it seems like. I was also told by some other guys at the shop that WH were a horrible army, and that I'd never win with them. I was fine with that kind of challenge. Soon, I was able to beat people, and was liking the WH Mech infantry style of army.

In 2008, I left Champaign-Urbana and Armored Gopher games (where a group Chambers and I helped develop still plays) to come to Indianapolis. I started theBack40K soon after. I wanted a way to chronicle my 40K. I'd been reading Librarium Online for a while, and Bell of Lost Souls, and felt I could write articles as good, if not better than what some of the FlyLords wrote on their own blogs.

I started blogging and going around to some of the Stores in the Indy area. I wanted to write about good, honest gaming, and tactics. I also wanted good, easily understandable battle reports, since I think that's where I learned the most about tactics, and strategy.

The GP north ended up being the closest to where I would end up living, which is where I met up with SandWyrm. For a while, it was just Chambers, Sandwyrm, and I writing. Slowly we've grown the family, and made it to more and more tourneys. It's great to have a community of people to hang out with, and joke with.

There are 5 shops here in Indy where people play 40K. I like being able to walk into most of them and know someone. It's almost to the point I've got a list of people who want games with me. which is odd.

To me, I'm still just that kid that grew up on a farm (20head of cattle and 1600 acres of soybean, grain sorghum, corn, and wheat) in Salem, Illinois. Yeah, I listened to punk too. hence, I'm farmpunk.
Saddle up to the game table, and I'll try to beat you with my 'outdated, horrible' codex that I 'should not win with'.

I also wanted to say thanks to all of you out there that read what we've got to say, and leave comments for us. This is our 'bigger' community. Maybe someday we'll host a GT here in Indy, and get to meet more of you.


*the pic is from Dresden Codak an interesting, and beautiful webcomic