30K, Epic style, Part I : Nostalgia

Brothers against Brothers

The first wargame *battle* I played was the original Space Marine. Me and my brother got the boxset I believe for Christmas. We already had Warhammer but other than a few skirmishes (we were poor and building armies took forever when you could afford two blisters a month!) never played a big game. This bothered my father and he went to the Valet d'Coeur (in those days the only gaming store of Montreal, and what a store it was) and asked the guys for something "we could play straight out of the box". What we got was Space Marine, a massive box with LOTS of figures and tanks, and buildings, and even better you could easily assemble the infantry and play even if nothing was painted. Le Valet d'Coeur even provided a "in house" French translation at no charge! Those two weeks of Christmas break were freakin' awesome!

A Wargame in a box!

We played a lot of games in our basement; me and Gabriel always completed each other very well. He's but a year younger than me, so we used to like the same stuff (we still mostly do), but we never argued over the factions. He loved the Joes, I was a Cobra guy, I liked the Decepticons, he was into the Autobots, etc. (yes, he was something of a goodie two shoes). And so, naturally, after reading the rulebook, Gabriel picked the side of the Emperor and I gladly accepted the role of the "traitors". In those days we knew very little about the fluff, and nothing about the Chaos taint of the traitor. I just saw Horus as a classic power hungry warrior who rebelled against his (weak) leader and mentor. You know, "make the Imperium great again". And the traitors had way cooler names and colours! So we had a lot of fun trash talking each others; I never played the loyalist trash, and he never played the rebel scum. While we painted very little of it, a few tanks, a couple of infantry stands, we played a lot! Sadly we lost most of our Epic stuff maybe two years later, after a small fire in our basement (caused by the other brother, the much younger one) and never played again.

Last year Greg, a fellow Canadian from the blog Fawcett Avenue Conscripts  started an Epic 30K project. I spent the whole tournament drooling over his stuff and by the end of the three months the itch had become a full blown scratch and in between flashes of 1991 Nostalgia I knew I had to start a project of my own (I find one of the great thing about the Challenge is the inspirations it gives you to start new project, although both my wallet and the girlfriend would strongly disagree with this statement). So I contacted Greg, and he gave me some very good pointers and I started collecting what I needed to get the ball rolling. My plan was always to start the project with this year's Challenge, and here we are...I also have a ulterior motive for this project; my brother Gabriel now lives in Japan but he' supposed to come back to Canada late next year. I intend to surprise him with a complete, painted, Epic game. Imperials vs Traitors, brothers vs brothers, just like the good ol' days.

Next post, we look at rules, figures and of course the most important question : which Legions to paint! Stay tuned!