154 2016 into 2017 and a Revelation!

2017.... My goodness another year has passed and I am looking forward into 2017 and wondering what on earth is going on!

But before that lets look back at what happened last year, 2016. It started with health worries that saw me start to get out more, to eat better and look after myself after years of... well not. Turned out I didn't have to worry quite as much as I thought (which was a relief!) but I did at least take on some of the improvements.

I get out and about more; I have found a real enjoyment for being outside and breathing fresh air and while I don't think I will ever run a marathon I can see me being a fair weather runner as well.

The return to painting has been great and I am really happy with the level of painting I have achieved and its really nice to look back at older models and see how much I have improved. More importantly I have really enjoyed it and the time I spend painting has really helped me relax. I still get distracted and don't manage to do as much as I would like but I can see it improving.

I started clay pigeon shooting (OK it was at the very very end of the year before but meh) and while I don't think I will ever win any trophies its another hobby that I enjoy, gets me out in the air and lets me completely switch off from everything else.

Work has seen my move from one corner of the country to the other meaning I am still lodging away in the week which cramps my painting a little. Perhaps one of the things for this year will be to come up with a mobile painting kit? Who knows.

Beyond me the things that influence me have been changing dramatically. Games Workshop! Oh my goodness but they have pulled it out of the bag. I had thought that ending the Old World and the start of the Age of Sigmar was the biggest mistake they could make. I loved the fluff, the stories, the history of the Old World and I saw GW as a mad man burning all that down. Now? Well I have had a little revelation.

The Old World is alive and well. Its still there. Its not gone. No more than any point in time is "gone". We (and I am generalising for the audience I think you are here) don't have any problem with the thought of gaming, painting, modelling and experiencing the American Civil War (ACW) period, the Napoleonic War, The Crusades, The English Civil War (ECW) even though they are long gone. Writers don't have any trouble setting their fiction in these periods and we love to read it. So why should the Old World be any different?

And that was all it needed in my head. The Old World is still that place of passion and joy I had known and because of that, The Age of Sigmar and the Mortal Realms could become something other than "the thing that killed my dreams". Dramatic huh?

I am still waiting on AOS providing me some of the things that show me how me a normal mortal fits into the world, culture, civilisation, trade, commerce and corruption. The farmers and builders need to be shown a bit more to give me a sense of conenction but apart from that I can already feel a draw to AOS and getting into it more than I perhaps did in WHFB the game and hopefully then the fluff as well.

I am going to leave 2016 there but to close I think its been a good year and I can feel 2017 going forward from it too.

151 Down Memory Lane (2nd Edition 40k!)

I posted these on Facebook just a couple of days ago and was pleasantly surprised by the response.

These were my first taster of Warhammer 40k back in 1993..... I was 14. (please dont do the math!)

Before then I had mostly played the various "gateway" board games, Space Crusade, Heroquest and the like. I remember distinctly starting to use the models in those games to play on open tabletops and realising that boards were too limited.

The joys of using an old subbuteo pitch draped across stacks of books to form hills!

Then as now I spent more time reading and digesting the amazing fluff and imagining life in the setting than actually playing but hey I was that kind of kid.

I had been reading WhiteDwarf for a few years by then so when 2nd Edition came out and all the confusing Rogue Trader rules came together in one package I jumped at it.

The plastic Orks and Gretchin in their static mono pose and the statuesque Marines where a real challenge for my teenage self and rest assured that no evidence of my 14 year old painting survives!

I guess as a combination of my age and the newness of the game but 2nd Edition was something of a golden age for me. I dont recall getting as much satisfaction from any of the following editions as I did from 2nd. It was prior to the codexes, although they were quick to follow and you still had a lot of flexibility.

What are your memories of those heady days in the '90s?

109 Dredging the Sump

Who remembers these beauties? :-)  My attic is proving to be a treasure trove of goodies from years gone by.

105 The Tomb King is Dead, Long Live the Tomb King?

It looks like Settra the Imperishable has finally perished and the whole of the Tomb Kings line is going with him. Sad times.

GW has put the entire Tomb Kings line on the "last chance to buy" list and wont be renewing it. I think the writing is on the wall for a lot of the "uncopyrightable" IP from WHFB and that Tomb Kings are just the first to bite it. We have already seen the Dwarfs changing drastically in form from where they were in WHFB and I think that is just going to continue with the other lines, either transformed or cut completely.

I must admit I splashed some cash to get Settra and a few other pieces when I first saw the news and popped back on a few days later to have a think about getting a few more to find that most of them were already sold out. Trust me to be getting into a line just as its being discontinued!

In other undead news I have been continuing on with my character models and am quite pleased with how my Tomb King himself is progressing. (I was panicking at one point because to be honest I thought I had cocked it up!)

I am going with the Gold/Bronze coupled with the dark green and cream/parchment colours and quite getting the feel of it now.

095 For the sake of Fluff

Fluff, no not that wispy grey junk you pull from your belly button, Fluff. The background, the Lore, the History of the people and places of the worlds we imagine for our creations to live, love and war in.

I must first admit that while I am a HUGE fan of well written Fluff, I almost never read what could be more commonly called "fan fiction" as in general I have found it to be a lot of overworked, dry, lifeless drivel. That being said I very much appreciate that most of you fine readers may well share that thought and equally that opinion of MY work so feel free to move on rather than continue reading! I know I would.

094 2016 looking forward

The new year is finally here, well to be honest it's come around so quickly I can hardly believe it!

This is the year of no excuses; I have all the tools, all the paint and oh my goodness, all the models I need to get back full scale.

The action list for the first six months is pretty simple for me

1. Complete the 30th Cambridgeshire Regiment (perry miniatures)
2. Start (at the least) my war of the roses mercenaries. Possibly as Burgundians. (Perry miniatures)
3. Practise and practise with basic airbrush techniques. (I want to get beyond just using it for undercoat!)
4. Avoid the temptation of starting AWI models!
5. Put together a plan at least for some Truscale Marines (this is one I have thought about for a loooong time)

I am keeping it simple for the first 6 months to see how life settles down, I have found it pretty hectic the last few months and hobby time has been limited (but thankfully not non existent!)


What are your plans for 2016?

093 Return to the Hobby room!

So those of you paying attention may have noticed that I moved house on the run up to Christmas and my hobby mojo got somewhat crampt by everything being in boxes!

Well thankfully I have gone from this..

To finally being all set like this.... :-)

You might have noticed that I acquired some new paint stands which are great and helping a lot already to clear some of the paint off my desk top.

This were classic flat packs which needed very little putting together and one is "free and easy" while the other is all glued together (glued works better!)

Now that I am settled and sorted I am hoping to get back to all the fun of painting again as 2016 starts.

092 Seasons Greetings!!

Perhaps a little late but anyway, best wishes to all of you this Christmas!

2015 has been an interesting year for me with a reborn joy in painting and modelling, relocating to a new house and getting going with new hobbies and health drives!

This year has also seen some big changes in the gaming world with the death of the Old World and the birth of the Age of Sigmar.

GW have raised the bar to the rest of the modelling industry with some amazing new models both in terms of the build quality and detail but also in the SCALE! Some of them have been just huge and in plastic too!

2016 is sizing up to be a great modelling year with progress on a lot of fronts seeming possible.

So here is to 2015 and all the best for 2016! Cheers!

091 I ATEN'T DEAD

In the wise words for Granny Weatherwax, "I aten't dead!"

Sorting moving house and getting everything in order has taken quite a bit more time and energy than I imagined.

I'll be posting some short updates soon with some more to follow I guess now in the new year!

088 And life gets in the way....

It looks like the run up to Christmas might be a little slow hobby wise as after five years in the same property our landlord has decided to sell up and move us out.

They have given us a little more time then they need to but it still means we will be manically trying to find somewhere and get years of accumulated junk packed up and shifted on the run up to Christmas. Far from the best time of year to be moving house! I should know as that's what we ended up doing last time!!

I will hopefully still get a bit of time to unwind and I will also try and update on new kit arrivals but it might be very hit and miss.

Wish me luck!

087 Rambling Up Date

For the last few weeks I have been doing Sunday morning walks come rambles in various spots around East Anglia in a vague attempt to one, improve my overall fitness (I am a closet couch potato) and two, get out and see some of the amazing natural beauty that we have in the UK.

The first couple of walks were a little sneaky as they either started or finished at a pub for lunch but otherwise I have been pretty good!

 Swans on a standing dyke leading onto the River Cam

 The start point on a misty Sunday morning walk along the Ouse

 Cattle along side the Great Ouse near Willingham

 Fenland farming along the ouse

Tree planting along the edge of the fens

I am going to try and show these walks in a more structured way than this but I have been a little rushed to get started on these so today is just a wrap up of the first fee walks; two along the River Cam and one along the Great Ouse and the Fens.

All of them have been great so far although one did involve a two mile detour... Yes I got us lost!! Ok I admit it! :-)

More to come soon

084 Lost in the Woods

So those of you that check in here my have noticed I have been missing for a few moments!

I have been holidaying again!

This time I have been enjoying the peace, quiet and tranquillity of a log cabin in the woods in Keldy near York.

Our Cabin.

This place was amazing. So peaceful and relaxing; not much in the way of activities but that was not what we were after. Just peace and quiet in good company to relax.

Our view and the cheeky little hot tub :-)

There are lots of cabins in Keldy but the spacing and the tree cover is so good you dont really feel that there is anyone else there.

Walks in the woods were wonderful. A couple of the days we went on guided walks and then we wandered on our own.

The guides were great, showing us all manner of different palnts and animals. What was edible and what wasn't. We also learned some bushcrafts of shelter building and fire starting!

Totally relaxing and no phone signal! The local village is about a 15min drive away and is a beautiful little village with a steam railway that runs trains everyday out across the north yorkshire moors to places like Whitby and the surrounds

Forest Holidays, you never know you might like it!

079 Stormcast Fluff - 40k Cross overs?

I was reading a short piece of fluff in Issue 83 of WhiteDwarf about the new Celestant-Prime and was struck (which was possibly the intention) by how similar the idea was to that of the creation of the Primarchs and the original Spacemarine Legions in 40k (30k but you know what I mean!).

A few suitable twists, the Celestant was not lost like the Primarchs but Ghal Maraz which was need to wake the celestant was....

Having made the Celestant, Sigmar then created the Legions, I mean the Stormhosts.

Its very much, Celestant made in the image of sigmar, stormhosts made in the image of the celestant in the same way the Primarchs are made in the image of the emperor and the marines are made in the image of their Primarch. Now right now there is only one Celestant and there were many Primarchs but who knows what may come in the future?

The other thing I found interesting is the Stormcasts are literally created, destroyed and brought back to life. When I first saw the models I had the image in my head that there was nothing behind those masks, that they were either empty husks (thousand sons anyone?) or machines.

076 Disappointment - Codex and Army Books

This is a short post which I think I will come back to a few more times in the future about the quality of the "newer" codexes(i?) and army books.

Now I don't mean quality in terms of the rules or how they play but about the quality of the book itself.

I have been gone many moons and while some of it is rose tinted nostalgia for days gone by I do still think that the quality of the books is poor compared to how they used to be.

The Art

There is some great stuff in some of these books and by no means am I suggesting its all bad or that I am any kind of artist but I think overall the art is regurgitated and bland theses days. I don't look at any of it (or very little) and feel myself magically drawn into the place and time. I don't find my mind wandering off thinking about the setting and growing it.

The Writing

I love reading, I devour books.

The current novels being written are good (some are awful) and I wont knock them but in the codexes? No, no no. Get your writers working harder guys.

Dull. Limited. Repetitive.

The Fluff

This is a catch all of everything else missed above and while some of it is still great I do feel that more and more is really just page fillers and doesnt deserve to be in on its merits...

What do people think? I am I just a old grump who has got cynical and picking in old age?

068 Coming of Age (of Sigmar)

As my painting and modelling mojo has taken a dive of the last few weeks I thought I would take the opportunity instead to waffle on about changes and. yes to be honest, excitement about the soon to be released Age of Sigmar (AoS).

There has been a steadily increasing stream of rumours and scares and now actual photos of the upcoming release and I have had a roller coaster of thoughts over whether its good, bad or somewhere in between.

Now until we actually see the full release and all the trimmings we wont really know but with what I have seen so far it does spell the end for Warhammer as we know it and the end of an amazingly detailed and lovingly crafted Fantasy World.

I will be immensely sad to see it go and also sad to see the end of many of the races of the Warhammer world which now seem likely to die out with the new AoS as well as many of the models that we have come to love over years and many iterations.

Some of the models that I am hearing rumoured to simple disappear are some great great models and the lose to the miniature world of these and the sure to be more that follow as AoS drifts further and further from the Old World as I have no doubt it will, is going to be huge.

The new models look very interesting, until I have one in my had I will try and with hold final judgement but while they look immensely well detailed I am just not convinced by them. This may be because I dont yet have any buy-in to their history and background so hopefully time will tell on that.

Thoughts of an ONLY skirmish style game and the total lose of a regimental, larger (not huge) style battle game leaves me cold I must admit. As an entry game to the larger thing? brilliant and I can see it working but as the whole thing?? certainly cant see it yet but time will tell.

I am not a fan of the "mazeballs power hero bash" style which I am hearing may be the case with the other "minions" jsut there to make the Heros seem even more powerful when they stomp them on the way to the enemy hero.

I will keep my eyes on it as I can see that some good models will come out of it and who knows it may be that it really is a dawn of a new age (of sigmar).

067 This week I have been mostly.....

shooting down the allies in Warthunder Bf109s :-)

This is a great game and free to play!

If you like flight or tank games give it a go, its no simulator but its cool and easy to jump into.

Normal service will resume shortly.

064 Thoughts on the change in GW Warhammer Fantasy

This one is interesting, while I have not historically been a WFB player nor a great collector of the range, I have always had a place for it in my heart and its always been the thought of massed ranks, row upon row of warriors all jostling in regiments. With that being said I am troubled by what sounds to be a move towards a smaller skirmish style game, I like the Mordheim style warbands which are more like groups of heros or veterans but I think that is a style and a game all to itself and I will really miss the idea of massed regiments.

I guess my like of the style of massed ranked units comes from a passion for Napoleonic period warfare with very obvious organised ranks together with images from the older styling of Roman Legions, Greek Phalanx, 15th century pike blocks and the like.

I would love to see the return of Mordheim style skirmish games, and the great styling of models to go with it but not at the expense of the “main game”.

On a cynical note I also don’t see the point in switching the range to round or oval bases for anything other that a commercial reasoning; cheaper for them to make one type (not much cheaper I would think) but also to have the existing range and people existing models redundant. I can well picture the peer pressure that will be gradually applied on people to change over to round bases and while some will change the bases on their own models the cynic inside me is sure that GW will be hoping that people will be rebuying the models rather than go to the effort.

062 Status Update

There has not been a great deal of progress of late on the painting and modelling front but I wanted to put into words what I have been thinking and the direction I am heading.

So progress so far, has been going well, slower than I had originally hoped but still good and I am really enjoying getting back into things. The British Line Infantry (30th Regiment) is going slow but I am finding it a great help getting me back in the painting groove and recovering my brush technique. I have never been a master painting but am pleased with what I am managing.

The number of models involved in the 30th and the need to brush prime so many has really pushed me back to thinking of getting an airbrush kit. Its something I looked at when I first got back into painting but had avoided because of the cost for something that I was not sure would have much longevity if I didn’t get back in the painting groove but right now I am thinking the effort of brush priming a lot of models is actually now getting in the way of moving forward so I am thinking I may bring forward the plan for the airbrush and kit. I had been thinking I would add it to my birthday list but that’s still a long way to go!!

I have put on hold my work on the necromancer for no other reason than I am struggling to get clear in my head the route I want to take with his colours. I think I should have switched around the red and black or gone with a brown maybe? Hmmm, I think I may have to just take the plunge and change him on the fly.

I have not moved forward with the Tomb Kings models but am thinking I might like to do some larger marbled bases for them and try a bit of Wappellious styling as a tester for that but I need to get some extra materials in to allow it to happen.

The work station needs some work! I need to get some paint racks or something, at the moment two thirds of my painting space is boxes of bits and seas of paint pots. I could put them all away in draws or other boxes but I need to have them out where I can find them!!

056 Distracting Views!

My little stop off in the Fjords of Norway did distract me just a little from my painting but I think when you have a look at some of the pictures here you'll understand why!
Bergen was a lovely town with some amazing views.

The massive bulk of the Britannia parked in Olden, she seems almost at big as the mountains!

The Briksdal Glacier was really beautiful and seemed to be on the verge of an avalanche all the time we were there!

All in all it was a brilliant break and I would happily go to Norway again, its such a beautiful country and the people are so friendly. Its a very low population density and the people take such pride in their country.

055 WD40?

Yeah again the witty title failed this is about WD 135 an early early issue of White Dwarf magazine by Gamesworshop.

Way back in March 1991 White Dwarf and to be honest the whole of GW was a very different beast to it is today.

In this issue we could see modelling guides on how to build a ruined temple, with arches, pillars and altar stone.

Rules and painting and modelling guides for using Ork-Genestealer hybrids.

Vehicle rules, (including a Imperial Guard Jetbike!!) when 40k was still really Rogue Trader.

Roleplay adventures in Marienburg.

And the amazingly good and long lost mail order parts pages!!