A swift introduction to me is perhaps in order. My name is Jonathon Chester and after a recent discussion over twitter I offered my services to Rich to contribute to his extensive blog by joining the ranks. I first started my way into war gaming back with the Lord of the Rings strategy game when I was about eleven back in around 2005 due in part to my obsession with the franchise at the time and the Mumakil kit was an OMG draw for me. After this in 2006 I first picked up 4th edition 40k and became reasonable proficient with my home brew Space Marine chapter but my painting was still very much to be desired.
A while after 5thedition dropped I picked up the Orks and soon became the bane of my local club utilising Blitzkrieg style tactics often running over half their army by turn two or three. One thing looking back though I recognise my painting ability as well as my desire to improve my skills to which I found my current standard of good table top that I continue to this day.
Eventually my run with 40K ended during 6th edition after I acquired a Tau force and whilst I did make use of a unit or two of the power choices (I’m looking at you Ricky the Riptide!) but often my list was a fairly balanced one that made more use of a solid core of infantry and the rest of my army was built to support this with either tank busting or heavy infantry weapons. I found even with this army, which even my opponents said were fair for that army, I just didn’t feel like I was being rewarded for the most part for tactical genius but for being able to roll above average dice and if memory serves me well my Tau in single games still run undefeated. This is when Fantasy caught my eye.
It was the release 8thedition Lizardmen book that caught my eye and my introduction to podcasts such as the Bad Dice and Black Sun podcasts that sealed the deal. Hearing about tournaments which mixed both a competitive and social aspect made me decide to jump in feet first at the deep end and booked my first tournament at Battlefield Birmingham. The result was four losses and a win but I learnt so much and ever since my game got vastly better which accumulated in my first ever best in race this year at Midlands GT with my Warriors of Chaos.
In this time I have also fallen in love with Mierce Miniatures game of Darklands. The instant I looked at this game after getting a free quick starter rulebook from Mierce own Tim Fisher when I was at the Mansfield Maul I fell for it. Looking at the Brythoniaid kindred was what really sealed the deal for me as I have always been partial to dragons and being a faction which upon writing this has three very gorgeous dragons.
Anyway that is a quick introduction to me and for this blog I will be mostly focussing upon Darklands with miniature reviews, the odd battle report and soon a bit of a beginners guide to the game.
Thank you for reading and look forward to writing future articles.