I used to have website (that I designed and wrote in HTML), back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I would run this alongside the website i designed my for then wifes painting and resin basing business. Both websites are long dead, but i have the files. So for histories sake and so i have somewhere to put the photos I decided to resurrect them and its a nice way to see how far I have come with painting (and as i get older its harder to remember what I did).

Most of this is from my very competitive days when I would travel to all manner of tournaments competing and spent most of each year preparing the next big army. Prior to 2000 we went to 2 tournaments a year and they were not a big deal. from 2000 onwards I went to a lot, i think 8 one year, the prizes were big and so was the competition. By 2007/8 i was over it all and had played a bit of LOTR and Confrontation 2nd ed before dropping out of tournaments. From playing in maybe 50 or so over 7 years, i have played in 2 of them since.

I don’t own 99% of this old stuff so the photos are at least a reminder, and encouragement to improve as you can hopefully see my painting progress over the years. You can also see some older style influences in painting and photo taking.

Also back then for the first few years i did not have much money, and NZ is a brutally expensive place to buy models, and heaps of the stuff was still metal, so there is definitely a cobbled together feel. By the later armies i was investing to buy what i needed as the awards were there, and we could get 40% off NZ retail from the UK direct (till GW canned that).

Much of the following text is taken from when I first wrote it.

Army 1 - The DoomFarers Space Marine Army.
Year - 2000

Background:

Having toyed with doing marines for a while and not having had a marine army since second edition, i decided to put together an army for that years NZ grand tournament. thankfully we had a grand opening sale at GW Wellington as i was thinking this through so i picked up most of what i wanted fairly cheap. i was also working as a casual at GW wellington, so had scored the occasional freeby, most coolly the sgt for the terminators, who was retuned by another customer already cleaned up.

The GT was a relatively new thing, it was the 2nd year and the first year had not been given much notice. But we had been heavily played 3rd ed and working out the game, as a major positive over 2nd ed. with a bunch of us motivated we all got armies ready and made the trip up to Auckland. The plan was to work on an army that would max the soft scores (painting and composition) and then be good at playing the missions. I had an idea of a marine army that could work that fit with my style and could look good. My chaos marine army was pretty bad and so i decided to make this new army for the trek up north.

I wanted to do an army that visually looked like it was in the middle of a prolonged campaign, with battle damage and jerry rigged weapons. also i wanted them to be more dynamic so got running legs from the assault box for all of the tactical marines (lukcily swapped with a friend who wanted a lot of assault marines but did not want the running legs). As i am not a fan of static heavy support i had no heavies but 3 fast attack in that years army.

The DoomFarers are named for an old pulp scifi/fantasy book (fantasy setting with Vietnam guys ending up there through a portal so a mix of Scifi and Fantasy), that i read as a kid that stuck with me called The DoomFarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley (came out the month before i was born). There was a sequel called Starfollowers of Coramonde that was not great.

The army was a captain in termie armour with twin lightning claws, 5 tactical squads of 5-6 marines, with a heavy and special, 3 landspeeders with heavy bolters, a bike squad with an attack bike, 5 assault marines with 2 plasma pistols and sgt with twin lightning claws and 7 close combat terminators, sgt, 2 thunderhammer/storm shields and the rest lightning claws.

the combat terminators were there for a counter attack or to go through the middle of the enemy. i was using these guys before they got the 5+ inv save (the Whitedwarf came out the next week). at the time i was using this army, characters in termie armour with 2 LCs were unheard of, i kinda pioneered it locally. for about 4 months after the first GT, GW could not keep lightning claw termies on the shelf, as they had done so well.

I won that grand tournament, and then while i was wondering what to do next i added a few other models in that i had lying around, like some more regular terminators, a converted chaplain xavier with jump pack and a dreadnought.

As you can see the army is pretty fugly, I was just learning to paint properly, and so the highlughts are thick, the paints barely thinned and its all a bit messy. As i could not get all teh guns i needed they were cobbled together from all sorts of places, and I decided that giant banners with odd quotes were a good idea (i was 23).

Army won a few more small tournaments and then i was sick to the back teeth of it. I sold it 2006 i think to help fund my first house deposit.