About Me
I’m Josh; a husband, father, wargamer, painter, terrain builder, woodworker, Halloween haunter, and general nerd with a tinkering problem.
I started painting 1:72-scale X-wings when I was about 15, having just discovered the fantastic Michael A. Stackpole novel series along with West End Games’ Star Wars RPG. I didn’t know about primer yet. Or decent paint brushes. Or acrylic paint. Yes, I still have the models. Yes, they look as bad as you’re imagining.
Those first four X-wings were painted in the schemes of the Rogue’s fighters from The Bacta War where our heroes have to disguise their affiliation and choose varying colors that mean something to them personally. I did Wedge’s fighter in the black/green-and-gold checks of his parent’s refueling station, Corran’s CorSec green with white & black trim, Tycho’s Alderaanian Royal Guard red with black & white slashes, and Gavin’s krayt dragon.
A few years later I painted a D&D mini or two and a couple BattleTech minis (all still with Testors enamels and no primer). I then discovered White Dwarf magazine and learned about Warhammer. That, coupled with GW’s “How to” books finally got me set on a path to actually learning and figuring out what I was doing.
Warhammer Fantasy took my fancy, and it was all I did for quite some time. After falling off for several years, it would – fittingly – be Star Wars X-wing by Fantasy Flight Games that would bring me back to wargaming.
The WORKS. Well, the shop portion, anyway. Mini painting and more is done in my home office.
I haven’t painted too much for X-wing even still, but I got WAY into collecting and painting Star Wars Armada. This is probably 2017-18, and while I don’t care overly much for the game itself, the models sparked something in me that had been dormant for years – the ridiculous urge to research fleet compositions, fighter wing makeup, and determine paint schemes for squadrons that only got a brief mention. I’d been reading the Expanded Universe since I was 15, and I have quite the library of novels, encyclopedias, atlases, essential guides, all the West End RPG books I’ve ever been able to find since first discovering it 30 years ago, and thousands of cards from the Decipher CCG.
NULL Fleet is the product of that craziness, and, in fact, the genesis of this website, all these years later.
Since that project I’ve found myself keeping notes in my phone about force organization, unit composition and color schemes, brief histories, and “historical” references for many of the various wargaming projects I’ve taken on. The “theme” or “fluff” of these game settings, factions, and forces is what keeps me interested, and I really don’t actually play a whole lot of games anymore. I’ve been keeping all this background stuff for years now, wanting to someday post each force in a forum, perhaps. Or start a blog.
Throughout this time I’ve also developed a liking for woodworking and a bit of skill. Halloween slammed me full-force a couple years ago. Now that insanity rattles around in my brain a lot, and I get all excited and have to share what I just learned or came up with, prompting my daughter to say things like, “Dad – it’s February.” This Halloween Haunt hobby, I think, is where I see all these other, seemingly unrelated hobbies overlap the most.
Oh, and I built my daughter a huge space mall several years ago for her 3.75-ish action figures, full of all her favorite stores at the time.
Look, I get burnt out, like I think a lot of us do, even doing things we love. I’ve finally allowed myself to flit from project to project, working on what I’m excited about while I’m excited about it. I try not to leave anything half-done, and I usually do a pretty good job of that. But I also try to keep the scope of whatever I’m currently working on small and accomplishable so I actually can get it done in a reasonable amount of time before that next things grabs my attention.
I mean, if you’re bored with your hobby project, why the hell are you doing it?
— Josh
Thanks for checking out my work. I hope you’ll subscribe via email, follow me on Facebook or Instagram (youtube coming soon), and come back soon. If there’s something I’ve teased that you want to see first, leave a comment on one of the relevant pages or email me!