How I Met Your Tervigon, Prologue: Rise of the Hobocrons

So I was convinced to chronicle my downward spiral...err, ongoing journey through my newest hobby.

Lemme start with this: I've been wanting to get into Warhammer 40,000 since forever.

I don't remember exactly how I discovered it, but I remember attempting to get ready for it in high school with (strangely enough) a regiment of Warhammer Fantasy skeletons. I never managed to go through the entire box, and I probably didn't assemble (and paint) more than four of the little dudes. The paint jobs must've been mediocre at best, and the whole thing eventually got either lost to the depths of the Marikina river, or simply discarded during general cleaning.

Still, through the years I'd absorb bits and pieces of the WH40K fluff every now and then. I wasn't a die-hard fan, but something in my bones (pun intended) told me that this was one of my fandoms. The aesthetics, the feel, the overall badassery...it just spoke to me. And it was just so cool.

Just another day in the 41st Millenium.

Fast-forward a bit later to college and WH40K finally managed to get into my gaming life: the release of Dawn of War. To this day I regret not having a gaming rig powerful enough to play it at home, but I had the good fortune of a few computer shops having it. I even managed to get into a regular DoW playgroup sometime around fourth year, and those were some good times indeed.

Most of you know what happened between then and now: years of card games (a.k.a. my gradual shift from CCG to LCG), which led to my discovery of the Appraisery (and I don't have to go into detail about how THAT turned out, you all pretty much know what's up between me and that place). It's been more than a year, or almost a year (I can't really tell anymore) of gaming and hanging out with my proverbial wolf pack. And then, just recently one of the packmates unveiled the concept of WH40K Kill Teams.

Get used to seeing this if you're my friend on Facebook. We're promoting aggressively.

Let me digress a bit. See, I avoided playing 'real' WH40K all these years for the sole reason of price. It's a notoriously expensive hobby (take one look at the product listings on the Games Workshop site) and needs a lot of extra stuff to go with it -- paint, glue, a 'workshop' space and whatnot. The last time I assembled stuff was with a few Gundams and EVAs in high school: compared to the rigors of Warhammer assemble-paint-play, that's probably like playing Spice World: The Game before hitting up Dark Souls.

Still, I'm a hobbyist who spends a good chunk of his cash on the stuff that keeps him sane amidst work and Life in General (one running gag goes, if I got back all the money I spent on all these other games I'd have a high-tier Magic deck). This Kill Team thing looked to be Warhammer 40K lite: 200-point squads compared to the usual 1850 to 2000-point armies of doom and death. A great gateway drug into the hobby, as it may.

Several army lists, a TON of advice and one sleepless afternoon (remember, night shift) later, I finally had...the box.

WELCOME TO DIE!

Naturally, I chose Necrons. I've always had a thing for the undead; I like the idea of the proverbial immortal army, unstoppable and terrifying. In fact, I just tried to play a necromancer in an ongoing Pathfinder game. Unfortunately poor Nick Romancer (actual in-game self-proclaimed title)'s in a party of good-aligned adventurers, and so instead of tearing a fantasy realm apart and becoming evil overlord of its corpse I'll have to settle for robot undead Egyptians who pretty much hate everyone. Well, I do like robots a lot too so it's more of an added bonus.

Anyway, on with the show.

By the way, the plastic smells good. Like, really. Good.

Now, I'm not going into this blind. I know that WH40K is an investment in time and money. I know that after the sidecutter and superglue I've got more shopping to do: paint, for one. I've several folks who can and will be teaching me how to assemble, paint and overall take care of these little robot undead dudes who'll be shooting stuff up on the Appraisery WH40K tabletop. I thought long and hard on this, and I wanna make sure I do it right with this hobby. In other words, I'm making sure to do my homework.

We'll hold off cutting and assembling for now so that I can get a proper 'education' from the aforementioned folks during my regular weekend Appraisery hangout. See, there's something...special about Necrons.

Go ahead and make that "first base" joke. Go on.

Every time you post Malware, Azmuth fucks up another damn experiment.

 As you can see from the box cover and that terrible shot from my phone just now, they've got...green transparent 'glowy' thingies, compared to the rest of the bits which are...well, opaque and grey, and to go better with my intended coloring scheme I plan to paint them blue.

Right...my coloring scheme. Well, my original idea was to have a sort of "red Tron lines" effect kinda like Nine-Ball's legs. And then I remembered a way easier analogy than "Get your typical Tron character but glow red instead of blue."

Then I remembered one crucial piece of advice that was given to me: "Read the instructions."

He's on a boat.

Handily enough, they even tell you what you'll need to assemble stuff and what parts to paint before putting the model together. Fortunately I also have folks telling me practical/cheaper alternatives to getting stuff like the "Citadel Hobby Knife" or "Citadel Plastic Glue".

Thus we begin my chronicle of my entry into WH40K. To be in-theme, I decided to name my squad-growing-into-an-army after my moniker at the Appraisery, Hoboken.

Here begins the tale of Hobocron: Bums in Space.


Brian was born in Marikina but swears that Katipunan raised him. On weekdays he's pretty elusive thanks to his night shift job, but on weekends you can generally find him at the Appraisery first, and Xocolat if he's not there.