Hi!
I was reading through this forum already since December 2020 but only now decided to finally join this forum, which is also my first forum since 2004 xD
I watched the first LOTR movie when it reached the cinema and was instantly hooked. Before the other movies released, i read through all the available books and came to love both worlds (movie, books).
By coincidence at the same time i came into contact with with first version of MESBG at a fair for modelmaking. I bought the Last Alliance box but at that time was more interested in playing and saw the painting etc more as an obstacle, so I never really used them. A friend of mine had much more money and time at hand and bought an huge Isengart and Rohan army so I was able to take a deep view at the hobby without having to do anything myself. However my friend was a pretty salty player and soon I lost any interest in playing with him. + in my teenage years i had already enough to deal with to be also marked as the nerd who plays tabletop.
Fast forward eight years and through a fellow student at university, i was again infected with the tabletop virus and started playing Warhammer Fantasy with Bretonnia. However i still did not like playing and was heavily shocked by the bad quality of metal miniatures this army had. Losing contact with my university friend, I soon sold my army.
Fast forward now to eleven years later, I funnily enough, came back to tabletop when my girlfriend said she would really like to paint miniatures. I first wanted to go back to Warhammer Fantasy but i found out the system was discontinued and that i really did not like the system and aesthetics of Age of Sigmar. But my girlffriend anyway knew she wanted to have LOTR miniatures. So long story short, I bought the starterset and some paints for christmas as a gift for her. At first i did not really intend to paint and play with them beside when my girlfriend wanted to. But soon i felt really drawn to the game again and asked if I could paint one of her miniatures and I really enjoyed it. And that way the hype got me and I devoured the new rule and army books and decided to get my own miniatures.
I was drawn to Numenor and bought myself some miniatures on the second hand market because I always liked their look and their history - also like to most people, the intro of Fellowship was awesome to me.
I also started scavenging the internet for every blog and forum coverging MESBG, which is how i came here.
So wow that was already a lot but I am looking forward to interesting discussions, feedback and interesting reading