About my hobby

So what is this blog about & who am I?

Well my name is Tim Kulinski, I reside in the Valley of the Sunstroke, Phoenix Arizona. This blog will be about my passion with war gaming as well as any other thoughts or rants that pop up.

So on to my hobby, I have been a gamer since I was 13 and it all started with the red box edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I then advanced to the Advanced D&D system about a year later. I have to say that I absolutely loved the old TSR products & I used to save my allowance to purchase the books. Back then the only cost about $15.00 for a hard bound book (The old DMG guide & Players Handbook). So I feverishly purchased them every two weeks from my lawn cutting money.

Shortly after getting into D&D, I found a wonderful company called Grenadier and back then they released Official D&D miniatures. That’s what started me into minis and I soon found companies like Marauder, Citadel, and Ral Partha to go along with the Grenadiers. In fact I still have a bunch of those old minis & some are still being used today.

My gaming stayed primarily RPG’s (Role Playing) with title like Star Frontiers, Gama World and other classic TSR title. I also started to branch out by playing Star Trek by FASA games which then lead to Battletech. I never really jumped into the Games Workshop games, but was aware of them. Until my wife & I went into a local shop (Quest Games) and she suggested we purchase Space Hulk. You see my wife loved the 2nd Aliens movie and Space Hulk reminded here of it. So we happily plunked down $40.00 and went home and played Space Hulk.

Well after we played a few games with friends the fever spread & we soon ended up buying Blood Bowl (the version with the old Astrogranite board). This lead to some friends (Jeff O, Don G, Pat O, and my brother) buying their own BB games & purchasing the GW teams.

After the BB fever subsided, I was soon looking at other GW products like Warhammer Quest, Space Marine, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle. WHFB soon became the game I started to play & I soon was a proud owner of an Undead Army, then followed an Empire Army, High Elf Army & Orcs. But my main focus was on the Undead.

Then the unthinkable happened, My Company moved me from Southern California, to Phoenix Arizona! The reason why it hurt was that I was going to a new city with no friends to game with. Well once the family (My wife, Son & three Cats) got settled in I went out looking for Game shops here in the valley. I visited many shops, but the one that was closest was Imperial Outpost rune by Darren Johnson on 43rd & Cactus.

Imperial soon became my new home and I soon struck up a friendship with Darren and started to build terrain for him. Darren soon prompted me to play in a few of his WHFB tournaments and soon found a good group of guys to game with (Brandon, Mike & Jim). We gamed a lot of WHFB and we still do some gaming today even though we are all so busy.

Then one day at work a co-worker (Kathy B) mentioned that her husband Rob played with “little toy soldiers” and that we should meet. So we set up a time to meet at Imperial Outpost and I soon had a new friend by the name of Rob B. He and I had the same background with gaming & I often wonder if we were not twins separated at birth since he has the same likes that I do. You can see Robs stuff here at:
http://robert.bluedream.com/

Well Rob does primarily historical gaming and I had been getting tired of just playing WHFB and been wondering about trying something new. Rob introduced me to the North Phoenix Irregulars, which is a Non Club of guys that do mostly historical games. And when I mean non Club, it’s basically a group of guys that play whenever & whatever they want.

Anyhow, most of the guys play Warhammer Ancients Battle (WAB) and this was the game that got me to do historical gaming. After consulting with Rob & a new friend Tom O, I decided on doing a Viking Army from the Shieldwall book.. Soon followed a Norman army & I have acquired a Mongol army as well.

More later…