Tuesday Minion reporting for duty

Your Tuesday Minion; BigLee, also
known as "The Laughing Idiot"

Welcome to Tuesday, and what a wonderful day it is too. This is my first stint as a Minion and if discussion from behind the sandbags it to be believed, I'm in for a baptism of fire. I've been lucky enough to take part in the Painting Challenge for several years and I suppose it was inevitable that I'd eventually draw the short straw and be asked to help out. Seriously though, I'm deeply honoured to be involved and have been looking forward to 'getting my hands dirty' for weeks. I'll do my best not to screw up.

As a new Minion I think it would be a good idea to say a little about me; after all the Tuesday Crew are putting their entries in my hands for the next few weeks. I've been a gamer since I was a wee lad. I started back in the 70's with D&D but quickly discovered tabletop wargames like Warhammer and 40k. From the very beginning I painted mini's for my games and I always insisted on only fielding fully painted miniatures. Unfortunately my painted armies would regularly be beaten to a bloody pulp by the unpainted lead of opposing players. Amazingly that didn't dishearten me and for a long long time I continued to paint mini's, play RPG's and get thrashed at wargames. Inevitably however my group of school friends began to disperse as jobs and women lured them away and I spent several years with a dwindling gaming group playing fewer and fewer games. My 'Hobby' looked like it was in jeopardy but things were about to take an unexpected turn. About a decade ago I discovered blogging and pretty soon after I found myself wargaming with an irreverent group of scoundrels based in Kent. Try as they might they haven't put me off and I'm still turning up to games uninvited, impressing them with my lack of tactical aptitude (especially my ability to consistently mishandle cavalry) and my freakishly bad dice rolls.

I learned something interesting today. The name Tuesday derives from the Old English Tiwesdæg and Middle English Tewesday, which means "the day of Tiw or Týr", the god of single combat, law and justice in Norse mythology. How very appropriate! So here I sit, hand resting on a pile of rulebooks, ready to judge today's combatants. Let the Tuesday Tourney begin!