How did you get your forum user name?

So, just for fun...curious how many of you chose your forum user name? What's the significance or story behind it? Mine, well I logged when I first started to know Intrepid, and I thought it would make him laugh. I always intended to change it, but it simply stuck. Now it's your turn; do tell!

In 2003 I started to do wargaming - specifically an ancients and medieval ruleset called De Bellis Multitudinis or DBM for short. We use 15mm pewter figures and a rather complicated set of rules to basically try and kill eachother.

Anyway - I was known as "the Ottoman" or "Crazy Ottoman" for ages, because I always used my Ottoman army. Anyway, after some time I decided to switch armies, I thought I would go with the Ghaznavid army. I even bought and painted a Ghaznavid elephant (excuse the poor quality photo)


Then I discovered the Buyid army and went on to use that instead of the Ghaznavids (the Buyids were Dialamites, at times they were allies of the Ghaznavids, but not the same people). My Buyids were awesome, even beating the worlds no 2 in round 1 of World Champs in PE 2007, but never managed to win a tournament. Around that time I began messing around with stupid armies (Neo Elamites, Limigantes etc) and started to actually get good results in tournaments (go figure, I only ever won 3 DBM tournaments and they were all with armies I took on a dare).

On many occasions I have packed a Ghaznavid army for me to use at practice, and I have often planned on playing the list, but to this day I have never actually even started a game using a Ghaznavid army.

These days I play Flames of War (also 15mm scale, but World War II). So my ancient cavalry armies have been replaced by some American medium tanks and artillery. Here is my recently completed M12 self propelled artillery - in reality this monster fired 155mm rounds, and was famous for being able to take out 7ft thick concrete from 2000 yards away:

The name refers to my/our beloved GoldenGate Highlands. Yes we absolutely love the Drakensberg as well and try to go there as often as possible, still we go to these Maloti Highlands probably 3 times more often. We know the people, we know the place as good as anyone. We have found peace here off the beaten path. In particular, the southern section of the park, too remote for the average tourist and very rugged, is sacred to me.

I will also celebrate my 40th later this year over there (and will have visited it many times this year before that as well).

PS. Oh, and the profile pic is on top of Katule peak on the Mafatle Ridge in the park, overlooking the Freestate Berg.

Haha, I like this thread

I had a lot of issues when trying to first register on this site. I think there must have been some problem with the registration system or something as nothing worked. Anyways I gave up and forgot about VE.

6 months later I randomly remembered the VE site that I had tried to join and all the issues I got. So I opened up the registration page and filled in all the fields with the first nonsense that came to mind, expecting the registration to konk out again. Can you believe it, it worked! I also then never got around to updating my details which is why my VE name is John Mark and I supposedly live in Nelspruit or some random place like that

As to my real name... that can remain a mystery for now

Smurfatefrog wrote: One night after trying to register online somewhere (I seem to remember it being on iMesh in 2002/03) as Smurf I got frustrated that this username was always taken so made up this rather random addition to my name.

Oh, OK. Thought you were French....

john mark 1 wrote: I had a lot of issues when trying to first register on this site. I think there must have been some problem with the registration system or something as nothing worked. Anyways I gave up and forgot about VE.

I had the same problem. Eventually gave up and sent an email via the contact us link. Got a reply from Chris saying that he has set up my account for me. Spent lots of my first 2 years on this site getting emails "try again now", and replying "still not working". Eventually it came right. Probably around the time you managed to register on the site...

My favourite cartoon as a wee nipper was, you guessed it, Darkwing Duck.

My initials are D.W. and as those in know might remember... when you're in trouble you call D.W.!