[Hobby] My New ‘Crons, Let Me Show You Them

I’ve been busy.

The long-awaited resurgence of guild RP in my RP guild has led to a renewed interest in WoW, with play taking place every other night. My bad back and lardy belly are demanding some attention, so I’ve resumed stabbing people with overgrown knitting needles in an effort to burn off some of the surplus blubber. Having taken a long, hard review of what I own, what I use, and what I actually give two hoots about these days, I’m liquidating most of my Mercenaries and disposing of my Cataphract Arcuarii – I don’t play enough Warmahordes these days to justify two armies, and I want to unhook the Skorne from dubious tier lists which, hand on heart, I have never actually done all that well with anyway. Anyway, if you want any Cygnar infantry or Mercenary warjacks, here’s the place to go, one third off RRP beat the rush BUY NOW SAVE LATER.

I’ve also gotten around to building the last of the Necrons I picked up second-hand back in October, and spending some birthday loot tokens on a few more long-awaited odds and sods. Would you like to see them? ‘course you would.

40K – Allies Fur Alles – Von’s Crons

So, last week I dragged myself onto Skype to discover that my lacklustre 40K Correspondent has actually played some sixth edition 40K at last, and while he won’t be blogging about it (something about proxies, unpainted miniatures, non-existent records and so on), it did at least start a conversation.

Von: Did I tell you I have been thinking dire thoughts of Allies for the 40K thing?

Lexington: No! Polate most extra-ishly, plz.

Von: Does sir have time to give any thoughts on Allies which he might have? I say so because, well, there’s bloggin’ in this.

Lexington: A co-article, as it were?

Von: Yeah. The sort of thing we said we’d do when you joined.

Lexington: We’re bad at that. Anyhow! Allies for your Cybermen, or Allies for Alles?

Von: Well, I figured I’d talk about my particular predicament first, and then if you had anything broader to say (you know, as a man who owns multiple armies and such). Although I like Allies fur Alles as a series. Maybe we should do that. Talk about the various reasons for taking Allies, and use our collections as a case study.

Lexington: I like this.

Meta Gaming: Collecting and Playing [also, eBay!]

So the other day Hark and myself and our housemate E and her friend-guest-of-the-moment were at London’s Wellcome Collection, learning about death, because, well, why wouldn’t you? Anyway, E and I ended up in the exhibition library, as might be expected from a PhD candidate and a failed PhD candidate, and got to nosing at some of the works amassed therein, readers, for the edification of.

E asked “do you identify as a collector of anything?” and gave the example of books accumulated for work – they’re not a ‘collection’, they weren’t assembled for the purpose of assembling, possessing and displaying them, they’re just there because we need them so often that it’s more useful to have our own copies than not – but we do think of them as distinct from the other books in the house, those belonging to other people or read for pleasure or whatever. She went on to explain that the book she had her nose in was posing a definition of ‘collection’ that was somewhat broader, and just referred to a group of artefacts amassed by a person. This is the sort of question which young academics ask of each other and is to be expected. Naturally, my thoughts flew to gaming, which is also to be expected, and I explained that – to me – there is a distinction between just owning stuff and collecting it.

Allow me to elucidate (well, I’m going to whether you do or not, it’s my blog after all). What it all reminds me of is what the staffers used to say to new customers, which I heard time and again whenever I went into GW of a Saturday, or a Sunday, or indeed of a Wednesday afternoon when I should have been doing double Games (in a way, I was… right?).  In any GW branch, near or far, the hail-and-well-met salutation would always be ”So, what do you collect?”

Wake Me Up When September Ends

It’s that time of year again, folks. September’s rolled around, and brought with it the start of a new academic year. Since I’m currently employed (for once) that means I’m teaching, and that means a dramatic drop in the levels of free time available. This year may be a particularly bad one, as the current gig’s location is Well Rural and imposes six hours of travelling time as a consequence.

That said, if I’ve worked my little routine out properly, I still have three hours of every weekday to call my own, plus weekends, minus the Saturday mornings I spend writing for the House of Paincakes. Good job, too, ’cause I’m actually quite fired up to play games at the moment.

The in-house RPG group is gradually sliding toward Greg Christopher’s Errant as game of choice, and the proposal of four-hour sessions on a Sunday afternoon has been met with cautious enthusiasm. (The original propsal of six-hour sessions was met with a rather emphatic negative, but four seems to be working as a compromise.) One of the group has rather more board-game, rolling-dice tendencies than is the usual wont of my players or myself, but – ever one to see a challenge and an opportunity where lesser men might see a problem and a ball-ache – I think I can work with this by cracking the miniatures out, and maybe drawing up some of those hex maps that I hear all the cool roleplayers use. I don’t mean running every single session as a game of Talisman or anything like that though. What I mean is using something like Hordes of the Things (on hex terrain to eliminate the mensuration and positioning tensions that emerged when I introduced one of these players to the LotR SBG a while back) to model the English Civil War I was on about last week.

Basically, the armchair-improv-theatre stuff would involve approaching and enlisting various Magicians, Paladins, Behemoths and other ‘special units’, which would then – along with the player characters themselves – be represented on a strategic-level hex map and positioned to halt an oncoming enemy force. Players would have to assign themselves, and troops, and significant NPCs/allied monsters, to strategic points, and battles could either be played out as wargames or simulated, Risk-fashion. I’d probably use 28mm scale models for the player characters and the very major NPCs, and 10mm for everything else.

10mm pieces like Kallistra’s are starting to hold an appeal for me anyway, for reasons that will make more sense once I’ve talked about what I did in my last few days of unemployment and what I plan to do with myself in the coming year. See, my newfangled commute takes me through Clapham, and therefore the Clapham Wargames Guild lies on my journey home.

This naturally means a renewed interest in the wargames I have models for. WFB remains popular at the club, and if I can persuade folks to play my preferred 1500 points I’m still cautiously in favour of that (I find the small game size limits some of the really bad craziness of which the game is capable – plus I have to be in bed by about ten on a work night). Some of the gentry are interested in Warmachine and Hordes, which means it’s demo time for me; I also want to get some practice in with the Skorne for the upcoming event calendar.

See, the Beasts from the East are my faction of choice for FQDIII in October; I’ll be one of the many, many people running Magnus and four Renegades if the next Dice and Decks event takes the form that’s being proposed (I’m thinking the Warlord running ‘Team Rocket’ of four Renegades and a Mule, plus Master Tormentor Morghoul running three big stompy Titans and light ‘beasts to go); and since SmogCon 2013 is positioned favourably in time and space (tickets on sale right after my first payday, event located on the way to Hark’s family at the start of half term), it’d be churlish of me not to go. Which has meant that I’ve been forcing myself to paint up the rest of my Skorne…

He’s turned out all right, really, although I’m becoming sicker and sicker of the studio scheme the more times I have to paint it. And that’s the problem, really; I have four Paingivers (which I’ve blatantly, totally phoned in, and which I will not insult your senses by showing to you), a Bronzeback (who should be fun) and a Razor Worm left to do, at the very least.

Basically, I’m sort of sick of painting anything but the most occasional model. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just drybrush, ink, detail, DONE stuff in like I used to, but unfortunately I still don’t like looking at obviously-phoned-in stuff, and it’s putting me off adding new toys to any of my existing armies.

10mm may well offer me a way out. 10mm fantasy in particular; Warmaster, Hordes of the Things and Hordes and Heroes all offer a quick and cheerful infantry painting experience (they’re so tiny that there’s not much point in making an effort!) coupled with the odd ‘big’ individual piece that I can paint ‘properly’. These being individuals, I shouldn’t get sick of them – right?

On the subject of small scales, I also have models for Dystopian Wars (thanks, Mr. Frontline!) sitting around waiting to have something done with them. On the subject of models lying around, there’s also the LaCroix family for Malifaux, who I painted up and then failed to do anything with since Pathfinder last year; and then there are my Iron Kingdoms RPG models gathering dust waiting for the rules to release later this month; and a few odds and sods from Mantic which came free for attending Live and Let Fly and which I might as well do something with at some stage.

There’s also the small matter of Return to Ravnica (the next Magic expansion) coming out this month and having some interesting duel decks that I want to play around with, and also the looming Mists of Pandaria release (although the intermittent and aggravating Internet connection in the Castle von Von mean that’s less and less likely to see the love). And I want to build a Blood Bowl team at some point. See? Loads to do, and rather limited time in which to do it, which is where this announcement comes in.

Over the next six months, I’ll have enough time to play some games, but maybe not enough to blog about doing so, and frankly I know which one I’d rather be doing. Lexington claims to be similarly busy with work and women and affairs related thereto, and Hark… well, not wanting to destroy the mystery too much, but Hark dictates her blog posts to me (she haaaates typing, you see), and so if I don’t have time to blog, neither does she, if you see what I mean.Point is, the update ‘schedule’ is going to be ‘as and when’ rather than ‘weekly’, or indeed anything with pretended regularity, although I’ll be keeping up appearances on the House of Paincakes as usual.

I can promise a list build and report post for FQD, as usual, and something about Errant once we’ve played it for a bit. If I try a brand new game I’ll try to say something intelligent about it. No more than that will be promised; if you’re desperate for a weekly drip-feed, try the House of Paincakes, Saturday lunchtime.

They have a Cave Troll. No, really, they have. It’ll be along any minute now.

i was impressed by how the starter experience was laid out.  Quite liked that you can turn the box into a board of just the right size for the scenarios – i see wot they did thar.  It was nice that the scenarios followed the film version of events, and that they explained how the rules mechanics translated into real fighting. For instance, in melee, where the loser of a fight has to back away two centimetres, the booklet translates this as “representing the losing model backing off, desperately trying to escape the enemy”.  Obviously it has to be aimed at the youngest end of the hobby market, so it does come off as a little simplistic and twee, but it’s not terrible.  The way that the battles got bigger was good for teaching you the rules and making sure you’d grasped them firmly, before moving on to more rules.  One or two of the scenarios seemed a little unbalanced – but then again, it’s difficult to balance the fact that some of the Fellowship are very impressive, stats-wise, vs. the Goblins, that have a pretty poor statline.  Vice-versa, it’s difficult to balance nine dudes vs. millions of gobbos.