Sparky is what the guys call me. I thought about opening this one up to the guys to write about me, instead of doing it myself, but I didn’t trust them. They have too many incriminating stories on me!

Just like the other guys I started playing wargames in the mid ’90s. I had tried the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing, which was fun, but it didn’t really draw me in. I was more a sci-fi fan into Star Wars and space battles. A mate was playing 40k 2nd edition with friends and invited me around to join in and the rest was history.

You never forget your first

It’s definitely true that you never forget your first model. Playing with mates that day I was introduced to White Dwarf magazine. In those pages was a preview of upcoming Catachan Jungle Fighters and I was hooked. Like Fury, I still have my first models. For me, it wasn’t the Marines but these amazing guard models covered in camo and supported by huge tanks. This one squad soon turned into a sprawling Imperial Guard army that is still not finished to this day.

After the Guard I quickly moved on to Space Marines and Orks because of that classic 2nd ed box. I did pick up an Imperial assassin along the way so I could make good use of polymorphine, combat drugs and Vortex grenades. But didn’t we all? This may be how I got my reputation in the early days for finding and using sad combinations. I have tamed it down over the years. As I neared the end of high school I was fully drawn into GW games and ended up working for the company. For the better part of a decade, I was a redshirt, a store manager, a mail-order troll and finally head of mail order before I decided staff discount had given me enough models to paint for a lifetime.

Hey! Do I know you?

I met lots of great people through my time at GW and still have people recognize me all these years later from my escapades. Apart from all the piles of plastic earned over the years I also have a few claims to fame like Fury and Fairy. The difference is I have pics to prove it. The trophies you can see below are for my finishes in the yearly staff tournament and the best-painted army award.

“I need to just paint faster and stop tying to be a perfectionist.”

Sparky

I’m the one known for procrastination when it comes to painting armies. I used to use tournaments to motivate myself to finish an army. Having that gaming deadline can be a great motivator. Then there was the time I was in White Dwarf for the “Tale of four gamers” series. That was some intense motivation, having a print deadline to get something painted and photographed. It was one of the highlights of my time at GW though. It motivated me to get an Imperial Fists army together and I had the chance to be on the studio stand at Games Day and meet a lot of other great gamers.

Another trophy for motivation

When I left Games Workshop I had to find other ways to motivate me to paint. Tournaments sometimes helped but I still procrastinated. I tried Armies on Parade once and that worked but I used a lot of my old models and found I spent more time on the board than my army. I did get a second-place and a great board section out of it all though.

So here we are!

At the beginning of this year I was in a tournament Fairy was running. I thought that would be good motivation to get some Bushido models painted. I got an amazing dragon done but the rest were basic. During the tournament I opened my big mouth and told Fairy that I was going to paint a model a week this year. So far that hasn’t happened. Now here we are and I’ve put my foot in it again and said I can do an entire force in a month.

So far things are off to a very slow start and I am spending more time on these blog post then painting. It sure has got the other guys motivated though! Let’s see come the end of the month whether I get it done or fail.

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