Continuing this week with the Pillars of Hobby discussion, I felt that the pillar of tabletop gaming would be the best one to start with. This pillar has been a very central one for my hobbies and is the reason I started this blog.
Tabletop hobby may not be the longest running pillar, but it has definitely been the most time intensive. The first real jump into the tabletop hobby was December 2003. I lived in a small town with an independent hobby store. It was my favorite store in town, and I was mainly there for card games, like Pokémon. Opposite the front desk was a small little rack of Warhammer 40k books and minis. I'd occasionally had a look at them, but sometime in the fall of 2003, another customer had noticed me looking and struck up a conversation about 40k. They saw me looking at a Carnifex and told me a bit about Tyranids, how there were brain bugs that controlled the other bugs. He also spoke about the broader hobby and how you built and painted up a whole army. It was a great pitch and as soon as I had the money, I bought that Carnifex, a box of Tyranid Warriors (the brain bugs), and the 3rd edition codex that were in the store.
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| My First Model - Tyranid Carnifex |
I remember spending the week between Boxing Day and New Years Eve down in my basement at a makeshift painting table figuring out how to put the models together and then how to paint them. The internet was still in it's infancy, and my childhood home was also rural, so I couldn't turn to an online community for pointers. I had no idea what a basecoat was, or how to assemble pewter parts on models. My Carnifex used to just crumble every time I tried to glue it together. But I wasn't deterred and eventually figured it out. I also began to slowly add to my collection. I could have the store in town order stuff in for me, so I would figure out what I wanted based on the codex rule book's art and place an order in the store.
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| My original kits for my T'au army |
It wasn't long before I also started to fall in love with other factions. The Tyranid Warriors box I had originally bought included a little pamphlet showcasing the other factions in the Warhammer 40k range. Amongst those was a T'au Hammerhead tank. It was love at first sight. Hover tanks were always my favorite, and the design was reminiscent of the Droid AAT tanks from Star Wars Episode 1, which had only been out for a few years prior. I was able to flip through the 3rd edition codex in my store and reading up on the faction, it reminded me a lot of the Covenant from the Halo video game series. A multi alien hegemony that worked together for a common cause. This inspired me a lot on how I wanted to collect the faction. I knew I wanted the army to be green in general as that is my favorite color (after blue which the Tyranids got). I had envisioned a Jade Empire of sorts, but it would be a few years into collecting the faction before I would learn a technique for painting metallic colors.
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| Top - Original Color Scheme Bottom - Updated Color Scheme |
This is when I learned that it was ok to repaint older projects if something needed to change. It was a central learning moment in this pillar of hobby, it was ok to go back and update things when I learned new techniques, or if something wasn't working. I'm still currently updating older T'au models as this is by far my largest collection. In game terms, I have around 10,000 pts of T'au. This is also the army that I did my most experimenting on for re-sculpting and modifying the kits. I didn't know it at the time, but after the 4th edition T'au came out in 2004, there would be an almost 11 year drought of new product. It was around 2006 when I found the online T'au forum Advanced Tau Tactica where I fed off of the inspiration of fellow collectors. I formally joined the forum in 2009 and began to share my projects and hobby experiences.
As the years progressed in my tabletop hobby, I learned in Warhammer 40k that I loved almost all the factions and decided to create a head-cannon story where all the factions I collected fought over the same area of space. I was up to 4 distinct factions by 2013 where I had Tyranids, T'au, Space Marines, and Necrons. Game wise thought, I didn't really start playing regularly until 2010. At that point, I had a huge collection of painted figures and decided it was time to get to know the game better. I had played a handful of times between 2007-2010, but it was that fall of 2010 where I decided to learn the game.
I was living in Kingston at that time and discovered the local gaming store The Gaming Nexus held regular Saturday open games. So I took my collection of T'au down to the club and joined in my first game. I was incredibly nervous when I first went as I didn't know anybody. After I introduced myself and that I'd brought Tau, there was a chuckle from all the players present as I was told almost everyone there had collected that army at some point, so I was in good company.
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| A game of T'au Vs Imperial Guard |
It was at this club that I really took off playing the game. Saturday gaming became my norm and I even entered into various events and tournaments (many of which have been posted about here in this blog!). I also found that playing the game gave me a new perspective for how I wanted to grow my collections. While still using the lens of "Rule of Cool", I had a better understanding of how the rules interacted and things to keep in mind when thinking about the next purchase.
The fall of 2013, I think, marked the beginning of the decline in my playing the game of Warhammer 40k and it's impact on the shape of this pillar. It wasn't one specific thing, but a series of changes over the next 10-ish years that lead to a reevaluation of this pillar in the spring/summer of 2023. Part of it was moving back to Ottawa where, at the time, there wasn't much of a casual scene or at least not an easy one to coordinate a game with. Around the same time, the change in the game with the introduction of 8th edition also contributed. That edition of the game marked the beginning of the move away from it's casual and narrative roots towards a more streamlined competitive form which was further refined by 10th edition.
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| My hobby room setup after we bought our first house |
Non-hobby life also contributed. I changed careers in 2014 and my work days became longer which left less time for hobbies. I then had a bit of a career journey until landing where I am now back in 2022. I also became a father in 2019 and then welcomed a second child in 2024. Then of course the COVID pandemic hit in 2020 which gave me more time to paint, but closed off any gaming I was doing for Warhammer. So a combination of personal life and hobby changes helped to reshaped this pillar.
It wasn't until the eve of 10th edition in 2023 when I realized this pillar had changed however. Back in late 2018, or early 2019, I became part of a Dungeons and Dragons group. Born from a boardgame group I had joined thanks to friends of my wife, we started to play every other week. When the pandemic hit, we started playing every week since there was nothing else to do. This started the rise of the RPG element of the pillar. This part of the pillar is the most dominant currently as we still meet every week.
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| Train Battle during our 4th D&D campaign |
Our D&D group has also evolved over the last few years. While we had just one Dungeon Master (Game Master) who lead our games and developed our story campaigns, other members of our group have also now taken on this responsibility, including myself back in the spring of 2023. We each began to lead other game systems and I started with the Star Trek Adventures game produced by Modiphius. We didn't play our fist session until that fall, but since we've started it's now one of the games we rotate in almost monthly now.
Being a Game Master has certainly been an incredible experience. It helps that I've been able to watch others do it on our group for years, and I'm still learning and growing more comfortable with it as I continue to do it. Trying to change my voice to bring characters to life, coming up with creative stories in the spirit of Star Trek. It also pushed me to think more on my feet as any Game Master will tell you, your players will always think of something you haven't, or focus on something you didn't mean to have them focus on.
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| The setup for a solo game of Bug Hunt |
Then in the spring of 2025, Miniwargaming put out a
video about a game call Five Parsecs from Home. It was also produced by Modiphius. A narrative focused, and model agnostic (which means you can use what ever you want to represent anything in the game) game system. After watching the video, I was hooked. It also helped to give my large Warhammer 40k collection some purpose. By that summer, I had ordered the book. As I began to play, I learned that solo gaming could help itch that desire to play a table top game on my time table. Current life is very busy, and this was a great way to slide something in that could be done last minuet, or started when I had a moment and then picked up again when I had a bit more time.
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| My collection of Solo Play books |
It's also helped me with telling stories. This blog was started mainly to tell my story about my hobby journey, but it's also now given me a chance to just tell stories from my games. I started with little short stories before my battle reports, then I started telling the stories of our D&D groups adventures. Now I tell the stories I get to create when I play games of Five Parsecs from Home and the solo RPG version of Star Trek Adventures, which lets me flesh out the world I'm building for my players.
So over the last two and a bit decades, this pillar has gone from a purely Warhammer 40k collection and gaming hobby, to a diversified hobby of multiple games. I think at it's heart, this is a pillar that truly lets my creativity flourish and it's pretty multifaceted. I can assemble, paint, game, and tell stories. I'd still say this is my primary pillar of hobby today and the one I am most invested in. In writing this post, I find it pretty amazing how much has changed since 2003, where I've started, where I've been, where I am now, and where I could go. This hobby pillar to me feels endless, and it always helps to make me feel relaxed, which is what a hobby should do.
I think that covers this pillar for now.
Until Next Time!
Czar Ziggy
