How The Grave Mind started in 40k; A legacy in the making.

by TheGraveMind

For me it all started in what seems so long ago highs chool. It was my junior year, and my friend who was a year older was having his graduation party. We were all hanging out in his basement, and somehow the topic of his 40k collection came up. I had never heard of it before then, but like many of the guys there, I was a huge fan of strategy war games. I've always enjoyed games like Starcraft, Age of empires, even Chess, though I'm not that good at them they are fun to me.

After some convincing, my friend pulled out his Space marines, and we set up a demo game. We decided on a Tactical squad each, and myself and one other guy had at it on a small table. Our friend told us the rules, and went on with his party, checking on us from time to time. Looking back, 10 marines versus 10 marines running at each other from 4ft away is not that amazing, but back then it was an epic clash that was as much fun as could be imagined.

And so my friend went off to college, and I went on with highschool. After getting accepted into the college I wanted, I found out my friend was going to that same college, so I got back in touch with him and we started hanging out that summer before I went to college. I had started a job that year, and seeing as no girl had won my heart, or wallet, and besides gasoline, I had little expenses back then. Man times were good.... oh ya story.
So one day we walked into the local game store, and I looked at some of the modeling stuff, and remembered the fun I had with my demo game. I decided I was going to start the game, I had my friend explain it a little bit to me and helped me choose a race. I wanted something Fast and close combat oriented. He told me Tyranids and Chaos marines were good at close combat. Chaos marines were too much like his space marines, I wanted something different. So I looked up the Tyranids in their codex. Love at first site, it was as if they were made for me. I've always had a passion for aliens and bugs, so this was a perfect fit.

I bought the codex, a box of warriors and some gaunts that day and after flipping through the codex, added in a Ravener because they looked amazing. So through my first semester of college, in my down time I delicately assembled my Tyranids. They came to some where around 350 points, and I unleashed them upon my friends space marines in another demo game. At first I was losing that small game, but surprise with out numbers came in and a fresh wave of meat for the grinder overwhelmed the tactical squad while my ravener caused havoc on the side.

It was the most fun I had had in a long time. Over Thanksgiving break, I got myself the magrage battle box, so I could have a rule book. One of my other friend pitched in because he wanted to try painting some of the marines. For christmas I got the battle force. I started assembling that force my second semester, and was amazed by the beast that was the Carnifex. How puny it made the gaunts seem. I grabbed some basic paints from an old plane model set I never finished when I was young and added basic layers to my nids and gave them zebra stripes.

That summer I went to the local store again, and started getting some games in, feeling like the complete noob I was. Most of the people were very nice and helpful and we were both working our way through since there didn't seem to be another Nid player around there. I kept working and bought some more models and expanded my Hive fleet. That next year of college consisted of more gaming and more building, with Christmas giving me my first Hive Tyrant, and another Carnifex.

Then I started going to the local tournament scene. This opened my eyes to how competitive the game could be, and how amazing of a paint job people gave these models. I got into it for the gaming, with painting being a hassling requirement for the most part. But I wasn't even playing the game compared to these people, and they looked amazing while at it.

So I looked up painting tips, put more money towards new and different paints while testing on gaunts and finally did a full change over. I brought back after some time,the semi famous stripes that made my Zebranids what they were. The fifth edition hurt, and the competitive scene kept me in check, but I was determined to learn and get better. I'd like to think that I have, and I know that I'm much better at painting now when I put the time into it. I've probably bought more than I should have over the years, more than I normally ever need to use, and Fifth edtion codex has changed that even more. But what this has led to is one very impressive and never truely finished Hive Fleet Zhuran!

What this really has done now is make me realized I need to finish up the models I have, and get a new group shot together. Because none of the pictures here really show the scale of how many models I have.

So how did everyone else get started? Was it for the gaming or the modeling? What was your first army and your first game?