The beginning is the most important part of the work.
- Plato
Hello fellow hobbyists and welcome to another week of The Art of Caesura!
Today my Black Templars army box arrived! While I was going to write about something else for today's post, its arrival inspired me to tell a story that I don't think I've told on the blog yet: the story of how I got into the hobby.
We all have our hobby origin stories, some of us had a friend or sibling who got us into Warhammer, some of us migrated over from D&D, some of us got bitten by a radioactive spider...anyway this is my story, and yes, it involves Black Templars.
As a kid, my dad and I had always built model fighter jets, and cars and all. And, like many of you, I remember trying to paint them with nasty enamel paints and those crappy flat-tipped, toothbrush-bristled brushes. So I had a background interest in models.
I was about twelve or thirteen when the third edition of Warhammer 40k came out. Some kid brought a Games Workshop catalogue into school and I remember a small crowd of us pouring over the pages at recess. I vividly remember thinking that the old 2nd edition chaos dreadnought was one of the coolest things in the world at the time (I'm pretty sure this was the exact image):
Even at this stage, I didn't really know what these crazy minis were or where one would get them, and I might have been content for them to live in my imagination, sparked by the pages of the catalogue - had fate not intervened.
Around this time, on a sunny summer's day, my mum and I were out cycling around garage sales. I saw a hot girl selling a skateboard and a bunch of T-shirts and other junk. I got chatting to her, and it turned out that she was selling a bunch of her brother's stuff while he was in Europe for the summer. Then I saw it; nestled amongst Grateful Dead cutoff Tees and skateboard wheel ball bearings, was a large, glass, teddy bear-shaped cookie jar FULL of miniatures. Scrawled on the lid, in big juicy black sharpie, was the price: $2 (Canadian).
Trying to "play it cool" I didn't look too closely, but I was pretty sure I could see some models that resembled the ones in the Warhammer catalogue that I had devoured. Years later I would come to realize that what I had bought in that jar for $2 was a bunch of old metal Battletech models, some historical figures (a Samurai, knights etc.) and the complete unassembled contents of the legendary RTBO1 Imperial Space Marines box from 1987 - the very first space marine models, for the very first edition of Warhammer 40k ever. For perspective, a sealed box of them is on sale now for $720.
Anyway, I snapped them up, built them up and just kind of played little games by myself: having them storm a little village made out of up-turned yogourt containers, searching catacombs for an ancient relic - all that good stuff.
40k must have been gaining momentum at the time because it wasn't long before a guy at school and I split the 3rd edition box. I took the Space Marines (to go with these ones I already had) and he took the Dark Eldar. I painted mine up like the guys on the box (...you guessed it, Black Templars) and so did he. We had a few other buddies who picked up Eldar, Imperial Guard and Chaos and had a good thing going, playing at each others houses for a few years.
<Cue the dream bubble harp music again>
I'll stop the story there for now, because what is relevant today is only the origin story, not the whole journey. But suffice to say I became more interested in Warhammer Fantasy and haven't bought a 40k model, or thought too much about the game for almost 20 years!
So, skip ahead to July 2021 and a Warhammer reveal show that was giving me serious 3rd edition Armageddon Codex vibes, what with the orks, Death Korps of Krieg (who reminded me of the Steel Legion) and then a teaser at the very end...
I was intrigued, but really didn't think it would amount to anything more than a new Emperor's Champion that, sure, I would pick up for old time's sake. I had the original metal Emperor's Champ and then the second (resin) one was hugely sentimental to me because it was the first model my girlfriend (now wife) had bought for me (which was a big deal to me as I was relatively closeted about my hobby at the time).
So colour me incredulous when we see that the Black Templars are getting a whole army-wide glow-up starting with this box that I now hold in my hands! For me, this army box is pretty much perfect. It contains a wonderful blend of modernized nostalgia (the old 3rd edition artwork - that got me into Black Templars in the first place - takes a place of pride inside the sleeve of the box and on the limited edition codex, and the Marshall in the box can be assembled with a re-breather mask and power ax as a callback to the Captain of olde) while still having everything modernized and Primarisized. Games Workshop went into a bunch of the homages in this article, and conveniently, this one - which just posted today!
I have been following the guys who designed the box on Insta, and the vibe that comes across strongly is that this was a passion project by guys who have always loved Black Templars.
Thank you to those who have read this far. Thank you for indulging me in sharing my hobby origins, and I'd love to hear yours if you'd care to share in the comments below.
See ya next week on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: Midnight Mass - Mike Flanagan
Reading: The new Black Templars Codex
Next Week:
Get your Geiger counter...
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