Well, it pleases me to announce that “Eternal Hunt” is one year old! And what a ride it has been: When I started this blog in late February of 2012, it was mainly to have a place for posting about my various hobby activities and to establish contacts with other hobbyists. Now, one year later, I guess we can call both missions accomplished:
During one year of blogging, I managed to crank out 115 posts on this blog, with a pretty regular ratio of two updates per week. The blog racked up an overall 61,000 views, which I am immensely proud of, considering I am by no means a celebrity or hobby legend. The overall views even eclipsed the 10,000 mark once, with 10,219 views for the month of January, 2013 — but that is a feat I probably won’t be able to repeat for quite some time…
What’s even more important, though: More and more people are commenting on my stuff and providing me with food for thought and additional ideas. And of course, this serves as a constant encouragement to step up my game. So here’s a very heartfelt thank you to all the readers, followers and commenters, both here and on my various threads on the forums!
Getting feedback from you guys or just seeing that anybody reads this stuff at all has helped me pull through more than one motivational slump! And getting to talk to talented hobbyists like Biohazard, PDH, Ron Saikowski, Commissar Molotov, the Spiky Rat Pack, HOTPanda, DexterKong, Mordian7th and many more by way of this blog and my forum activities has been a real blast and maybe the best blogging experience of all, so thanks to you guys as well!
Oh, and while updating this blog and trawling the other blogs and forums is sometimes quite a bit of work, I still managed to paint about 90 models since starting the blog – among them some bigger projects like my first tank ever or my converted Heldrake – and kitbashed and converted quite a few more, so I guess the blogging didn’t actually completely prevent me from doing actual hobby work, after all.
Now, before I get all sappy, what better way to celebrate this occasion than to descend into the deepest, darkest dungeons of my personal hobby history and show you something reeeally old? That’s right, my first 40k models ever!
Before we do that, though, you have to understand that those were very different times: The Internet, back then, was still mainly the domain of “The Haxorz” and those patient enough to be rooted through to a network of what ultimately amounted to crude excel spreadsheets by way of their actual telephone. So what I am trying to say here is that there was no way of getting inspiration and help from the forums, and even actual hobby materials were scarce to come by.
When my buddy Phil picked up 40k around the 8th or 9th grade, though, us proto-nerds knew he had something special on his hands. And I immediately recognised the resemblance of his 2nd edition starter box minis to those that had come with my treasured box of Space Crusade (which, until then, I had mostly regarded as a dolled-up version of HeroQuest…IN SPACE!).
Anyway, I remember the school breaks spent poring over the few precious colour pages in the middle of the 2nd edition rulebook, admiring the fantastic models and great paintjobs (pro tip: Some of them didn’t manage to hold up all that well…). And so, one day, after school, I sat down with the desire to paint my own Space Marines just as well.
I didn’t have much to work with, though, apart from the Space Crusade models as well as fleeting glimpses at the aforementioned colour pages and the painting guides that came with the 2nd edition starter box:
Yep, still have ‘em…
So here’s what I came up with:
Yeah, I know, not even close 
In any cases, this guy was probably my very first Space Marine ever. Of course I didn’t know anything about the 40k background (which went pretty much completely out of the window in the horribly bowdlerised German translation of Space Crusade anyway, but that’s a story for another time), so I just went with what I thought looked cool. That is why this guy is all over the place from a heraldic perspective and should also explain why, in addition to several crude freehands and effects that were clearly beyond my abilities (the checkerboard effect comes to mind), I also gave the model a crude version of the Dark Angels chapter badge:
For my next project, I wanted to try something different, and even then, we loved the Legion of the Damned. We knew next to nothing about those guys (because there was even less background for them than today, and even then, we really only had that one painted model in the painting guide to go by), but we still loved that black armour with the painted on bones and flames — which nerdy teenager wouldn’t? So here was my attempt at emulating those effects:
Note the bones painted onto the model’s right hand and forearm. And how cute, I even managed to paint a small skull on the left shinguard
On the other hand, I couldn’t even begin to explain to you why I added that Ultramarines emblem on the right shinguard. Hmmm…
I even tried my hand at an officer,using a sergeant model from the Space Crusade box:
I still think the painted on goatee and scar through the right eye are nice touches. Oh, and there is yet another unexplained Ultamarines symbol. Oh well…
Of course I also tried my hand at the other side of the spectrum! Here’s my very first Space Ork for you:
Not much to say for this guy, apart from the fact that I am still childishly fond of the primitive camo pattern I painted on his pants…
Now what does this nostalgic and slightly embarrassing tangent tell us? Well, this is where it all started! Fast forward roughly twenty years (God, I feel old…) from those first models to me starting my very first wargaming blog, which, in turn, is already one year old today. Huzzah!
So where do we go from here? Thanks again to anyone showing interest in this blog! I’ll keep the content coming (although I cannot promise you whether I’ll be able to keep my posting schedule locked at two updates per week forever), and I would love for you all to keep bombarding me with feedback, ideas and criticism!
Here’s to Eternal Hunt! And to you people! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!
Filed under: 40k, old stuff, Pointless ramblings Tagged: 40k, anniversary, blast from the past, blogging, eternal hunt, old models, space crusade, starquest
