It was the year of board games

My kids did get some 40k stuff, and I'd made 40k advent calendars.  The theme this year was board games.  Between my kids, wife and myself we just go Lego Minotaurs, Lego Creationary, Munchkin, Primordial Soup, Settlers of Catan, Forbidden Island, and Castle Ravenloft.  Other bits too, but I'm really looking forward to some of these games.  We've already tried the two Lego games.  Minotaurs is great if you want something nice and confrontational, plenty of opportunity to mess with people.  Creationary is good for getting inspired, need to be quick with your fingers.  Both well recommended.

Its a Festivus Miracle.  Happy Holiday of your choice all.

We don't need no stinking rules

You see all these heated arguments about obscure rule interpretations.  Rules as written vs rules as intended and people being dicks about it just to make sure we all know their opinion is the only one that counts.  Thing is, I think my kids, particularly my 8 year old have way more fun with 40K than any of these people, and they don't even use the rules.  You always know when the conversation starts 'hey daddy, guess what the ork boss did?' that you are about to get a long and detailed battle report.  With sound effects.

Rules

And of course the other thing with being a kid is you don't need rules to have fun playing with the minis.

Kids

The reason that I'm back painting, and trying to learn the new 40k rules is that my kids have got excited by it.  Figured I'd post a shot of them all excited and working hard on their miniatures as I doubt I would have been painting again if it wasn't for them.

Old school minis

My dad was over for a couple of weeks and a fun time with family. He bought with him a few boxes of my old mini from back in the day. Paint job on some of these was interesting. You can kind of see me learning new techniques when you look through them. I knew Fletcher would like some more marines, so a few hours in PineSol stripped the paint of a bunch and I just got redone painting them. Pretty happy with the results. The first is a 1985 'marine with heavy laser'. Kind of had to get painted up as sternguard.