Blame.

There are a few reasons behind the little metal men mania that has now engulfed me and one of the bigger ones is Mark "Frocker" Hewitt who I've mentioned previously.

 

I've known Mark through the world of grown men riding skateboards for years. Some may say this is another attempt to reclaim youth, in a sense yes but mainly no - we've never stopped, it's just something that pretty much everyone I know do (badly in my case).

Mr Frocku boardsliding many moons ago in Bristol

 Skateboarding has made me lucky enough to go on a few trips and hang out with Mark and his love of Warhammer and little men painting finally came out (probably during a chat whilst drunk on German beer) on one of these.

 

And he's good at it, really, really good. Don't believe me - check his blog out here or the interview on the Corehammer blog here.

 

This chat led to Mark becoming the recipient of a big box of miniatures I dug out from the depths of my garage. The old "I've got a few things stashed away from when I used to do that" conversation. The level of stoke he had when he opened it really spurred me on to get back into the hobby. Mark's pretty amped on everything anyways (even if he is one of those gothic types) but even this seemed a new level of excitement.

 

So thanks Frock you lovely man you, for re-igniting my nerd cells and I sincerely hope we can get together and have a proper geek out soon.

Listy listy list list

Having had a crack at painting as my first foray back into this hobby I figured I'd better set a few goals to help push myself along a little.

Firstly I figured it best to find a system to start playing. The obvious ones would be the GW games I played first time around but after checking out some of the starter kits (pricey), background (woah heavy stuff) and rules (lots of) I had a hunt around for something different.

First up was Across the Dead Earth, a Post-apocalyptic skirmish game set in the future ruins of the UK. Brilliant concept and incredibly well thought out. Then I realised I have no-one to play with, and with the starter kit being £50 I figured it may be better to look elsewhere. I do have a strange feeling ATDE will be making some sort of impact on my gaming at some point though, it's too good not to!

Looking at what miniatures I had left over gave me 2 choices - Epic scale games or a fantasy battle type of deal. A quick search at work led me to the KR-16 8mm skirmish rules from Angel Barracks - free, simple to understand and I had a LOT of old Epic scale stuff that could be used for it. Only problem was getting them off the current bases and onto tiddlywinks. Trickier than it seems but again another project I think will come back around once i get into the swing of things.

That left the fantasy miniatures of which I have an incredibly odd mix of - everything from 1980's pre-slotta goblins to Chaz Elliot Elves and the odd sprinkling of Chaos Warriors, Undead and Dwarves. Again more constructive time spent searching the interwebs at work uncovered the Song of Blades and Heroes skirmish rules from Ganesha Games. These sounded perfect for what I wanted - small warband scale skirmishes with quick and easy to understand rules, the bonus being the cheap price and the fact you can download a PDF of them. Sold.

So with that decided I guess I need a list of things to do. I'm beginning to sense this may be the first in a long line of lists.

To do fairly sharpish:

1. Find some suitable rules to get into - DONE!

2. Generate a couple of beginner warbands for the first game - DONE! There's an incredibly handy online warband generator for SoBH that I used. I'll post more on this goal when I've done a bit more of the next one.

3. Paint aforementioned warbands - UNDERWAY! Infact one is almost done. Crikey.

4. Make some scenery - UNDERWAY! Again this has been quite interesting and worthy of a blog post, only if to give people a laugh at how poorly made it is.

5. Play an actual game - NOT YET. My brain-oddness tells me this can only be done with painted miniatures and not before then.

To do in the future:

1. Play against another human person. This will probably end up being my son, who while only 3 1/2 at the moment will probably be of an age to play when I'm done painting!

2. Paint a few more warbands, in preperation for the next point...

3. Plan a campaign. SoBH has some really good campaign rules and a storyline is already forming in my head.

4. Venture out and maybe check out a gaming club. A pretty big step this one as SoBH is not widely known and most places seem GW heavy. This may lead me to check out the WHFB 9th edition rules when they come out, if only at skirmish level.

So thats that for now. Hopefully next post will be about a completed warband.

Little bit here...

With the restarting up of my little person obsession it was pretty obvious there would be a lot of painting involved. My history with the brush is not a glamorous one, I'm definitely from the school of "slap it on, slap some more on, slap some silver on the weapon/pointy bits and go play" school of things. In fact the models I have left that are painted are pretty shocking, even the ones I thought were pretty good.

So it was with some trepidation that I bit the bullet, invested in a Vallejo paints starter set and some brushes. Then it was just a case of what to start on. A good rummage through the pile for something simple and fun turned up this chap.

Simple enough to paint yeah? Bit of green, bit of brown, bit of green to cover up the bit of brown that's gone on the bit of green I painted before.

In fact I seem to have developed a good bit of patience this time around, and actually found the whole process enjoyable rather than a chore or something to be rushed through. I've got an awful lot to learn but I'm pretty stoked on how ol' Snurk the archer turned out.

Now what is next....