I started this blog to talk about three things: wargames, models and related hobbies. My intent is to tell the curious about the good things that come from the hobby, to talk shop with the seasoned veterans, and to, hopefully, learn a thing or two from the master practitioners along the way. I’m still stepping my own game up! But first, why this blog? And how did I get here?

I’ve always been a gamer. Some of my earliest memories are of games: My mom desperately trying to help tiny, 5-year-old Chad get over those end-level steps in the first stage of Super Mario Bros. Being fascinated with the millions of tiny pieces arrayed on a Risk board. The total obsession that was born in my mind after reading the 3rd edition Battletech boxset manual and not having one, single clue how to actually play the game. Battletech is, coincidentally, also what turned my love of the written word into endless consumption of gritty science-fiction novels. 

Eventually, I landed on some Warhammer 40k novels in my teens. Those books rocked me at the time, and then a friend told me about the game. I had dabbled with and enjoyed model-building prior to that, but the idea of assembling a literal army of them to my specifications, after reading about and researching such a richly detailed and fleshed-out universe captivated me. 

The notion that my friends would be doing the same thing, and that we would be doing it together, absolutely mesmerized me. I was soon to uncover a totally new and novel way to interact with several of the subjects I enjoyed most, something that welded my competitiveness, love of sci-fi, gaming and modeling together!

Those first few weeks were a blur of study, building, painting (poorly) and thrilling head-to-head showdowns in miniature. I had never done anything quite like it, and was quickly hooked. Alas, my generic Ultramarines got brutally bulldozed again and again against the Tau and their damned railguns and the unknowable, munchkin-tastic Necrons. And worse, for a burgeoning wargamer, my meager teenage wages could afford precious few GW models to keep up with the ever-growing and more lethal warbands of my pals.

I hit the wall on my 40k adventure only a year later, after countless defeats and my first taste of what I learned later was, your friend and mine, “codex creep.” I sold off my set in dismay, and I did not mess with any more modeling or tabletop gaming for two whole decades. A cross-country move, a new career and other, far more expensive pastimes swept all that away. Or so I thought, until in March of 2019 I bought on a whim the then-new Battletech A Game of Armored Combat set. Cracking that box, nostalgia stomped me as flat as any giant warmachine could: all the memories of those good days spent building models, agonizing over just-right paint choices, discussing theory and strategies, and shooting it out with my friends hit me so hard I relived them. And I would finally learn how to play Battletech!

And it was a timely foray, too, for I was dreadfully tired of staring at screens. Constantly on a monitor for work, phonecalls and constant texts all day and then, when it was time for some R&R, online shooters to keep in touch with distant friends. I was beyond sick of digital everything, everywhere, all the time. I savored any at-home hobby time that was non-electronic and preferably well away from the retina burn of a screen. Those new, nifty Battletech models were the answer and I soon rediscovered the profound joy of prepping and painting a tiny model, only this time I had a lot more experience and much better tools.

From the bonsai-like flow of cutting, filing, shaving and sanding parts to get them ready for painting to the quiet-yet-engaging solitude of nailing that sick paintjob, it is all wonderful. And it is a total hobby, one that stimulates the mind and the senses while also training the hands for stillness and the eyes for sharpness. And that’s before the tiny minions ever take to the table: Games of chance are always thrilling, and simulating the outcome of a battle with dice rolls is certainly such a game! Since then, I have made several close, dear friends as a direct result of re-entering wargaming on full afterburner. Gathering with them and other players around a table, live and in person, is a collaborative, tactile experience in a way and of a kind that no videogame is.

I credit the hobby, as a whole, with the curing of both my creative malaise and serving as my refuge from the important but always-on and relentlessly invasive digital noosphere we are all, increasingly, full-time inhabitants of. My goal is to share these benefits with others, people who are unaware or previously dismissive of the hobby so that they might find something like the joy I have. And I also want to provide insightful or at least useful commentary and resources to players who have been at it for a while.

And that’s my story, reader, that’s the “why” behind this blog. I appreciate you reading this far, and I’m glad you are here. I really am. My contact email is below, and the button will take you straight to the content.

contact@thechadnabors.com