I’ve been painting miniatures since 1985, I started by painting dungeons and dragons figures for a couple of games called Melee and Wizard by Steve Jackson. I had a complete collection of Barbarians, rogues, Wizards, and monsters, and they looked terrible but I had fun playing with those figures. I still own them today; I just pulled them out after finding a used copy of Heroquest at the local Salvation Army. I played GURPS, Warhammer 40K, Warhammer Fantasy, and many other games after those first fun years of playing D&D. Over the years I’ve built quite the collection of figures numbering in the thousands. This year I’m 45 years old, I have 3 children, but mostly I play games with my youngest Jarrett, he’s 12.
I’ve been divorced from his mother for the last few years and have since remarried. I get to see my son only once every two weeks, so I’ve taken it upon myself to teach him gaming in all the aspects that I loved over the years. I also have started to paint miniatures again; I built up a collection of models that I have put aside to paint at a “later date”, which seems to be now.
Jarrett and I have been playing a new game called Heroscape, a fun frolic, not as complete as a war game as let’s say fantasy battle or 40K, but a fun game to create any kind of scenario for what is called “out of time” battles. It’s also easy to bring other game systems into the fold of this game system, so Roman legionnaires can battle Space marines, and Zombies can battle Captain America and the League of Amazing heroes, as you can see tons of fun for a dad and his son. I’ve also become obsessed with collecting again, I love buying figures, I love painting them, and seeing them on the shelf. Sometimes I just walk in the room and look at all the figures and smile, admiring the work, and thinking of all the adventures my son and I will have fighting the battles of the future. I know in the future, my son will get too old to play with figures and his father and move on to adult things. So I’m holding on to this time to cherish for the future, when I am alone and have no other players to have fun with…
And maybe one day, my son will take all the worked I’ve done and play with his children, I can see him right now, holding up a Space marine and saying to his son… “My Father painted this…”
Tags: Gaming
