Dungeons and Dragons

My dad is into model trains. One day, when I was in my mid-teens, I went with him to the local hobby store. On the way through the store to the train section, I happened to find a display of unpainted metal fantasy miniatures. The sculpts were amazing... every little detail was articulated, every fang, every link of the chainmail, every scale... I was instantly smitten.

Thus began my love of miniatures. I bought a few and started painting right away (Grenadier models, soon followed by Ral Partha). Eventually, my curiosity about these critters led me to Dungeons and Dragons - I got the Basic (red box) set as a holiday present, and ran with it from there. I roped my brother and his friends into playing, and for most of my high school years, we had a decent-sized group going.

I didn't keep it up much after high school, and ended up selling most of my minis. I would get back into the minis hobby a bit here and there, until the Mage Knight game came out. This game used pre-painted plastic minis with a set of rules for battling them against each other. Right up my alley! So I played MK for a while... and then Hasbro came out with the D&D Minis game. Here were prepainted minis of classic monsters from my high school days, plus DDM was just a better skirmish game. When Mage Knight switched to a 'new' (worse) format, I switched to DDM (and got my brother into it as well).

I played DDM on a tournament level for a few years, and eventually had a complete collection (don't ask how much money I spent). Then the unthinkable happened - DDM also switched to a 'new' (worse) format, and I dropped the game like a hot potater. I sold off my vast collection, except for a few of the cheaper models, and focused on painting and terrain-building.

Now, I'm working on creating a minis game that fuses the best aspects of DDM, Mage Knight Dungeons, Basic D&D, and mechanics of my own design, and mixes it all into a fun, playable game. It's... a work in progress.

But at least I have minis for it!