My name is Randy Tenvoorde and I'm a Graphic Designer for an advertising agency in central Minnesota. I'm very happily married to a beautiful woman named Becky and have three wonderful kids Zach, John and Sam. I know everyone says that but for me it's true. Except for wanting more than 24 hours in a day, I couldn't ask for much more. Oh yeah, I'm also controlled by seven cats.
I started scale modeling around 1981. It started with cars and worked my way up to aircraft, sci-fic and into military. I liked military the most because of the level of detail and realism that's possible in recreating these destructive machines. I never worked much on creatures or people. I still have the instructions for a majority of those models I've built over the years as a record of sorts. There's about 120 of them. I did scale models as a hobby through high school, even winning a few modeling contests at our local hobby shop.
My gaming addiction started about the same time. A friend at the time introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons: Basic Set. When we couldn't play face to face, we would call each other and play over the phone. In retrospect, I guess my parents never needed the phone that much! At about the same time another friend of mine introduced me to a game called Midway by Avalon HIll and another game called Flattop. Both were WWII sea/air warfare simulations.
In 1983 I hit high school and found gamers club there. Battletech became my newest obsession. I have the books and boxes going back to "Battledroids", which was the first iteration. (Fasa was sued by Lucas, who owned the term "Droids" and Fasa changed the name to Battletech.)
This gamers club was responsible for introducing me to the full wondrous wide range of gaming. Nuclear War, Naval War, Illuminati, Car Wars, Titan, Diplomacy, Fortress America, Junta, Gammarauders, Steve Jacksons Killer, Rail Baron, GEV/Ogre, Talisman, and many others that I can't remember at this point. I've played a lot of games.
Around 1995 a friend introduced me to a game called Warhammer 40000 (40K). I was offered a bunch of orks for free (Thanks guys!) and haven't looked back. I didn't start painting my miniatures until about 2002. This is also (coincidence?) about the same time that my kids started becoming of age to understand gaming and want to do/paint up models.
My focus, for now, in the gaming realm is 40K and painting miniatures. Warhammer 40K is the perfect mix for gaming and fine scale modeling. I paint when my wife is napping or watching something on TV that I don't care for and the guys I throw down with play about every two months or so, given schedul
