Progress, or what have I got myself into..

To avoid a large gap between posts here's a little (edit:Very waffly) progress report and a bit a chance to take stock of what I want to do in the future. Some good stuff, a bit of a painting frenzy and Yay - dice rolling!
Firstly I got in a couple of quick games of SoBH with the finished Gobbo and Elf warbands. First game was possibly the quickest game ever - Gobbo leader killed in turn 2, everyone else routed off the table due to terrible quality rolls. In fairness I think I missed a few rules that could have made it last a bit longer but as my first -reintroduction to moving little men around a table while rolling dice it was good. Let me have have a chance to play again where things lasted a bit longer - the Troll actually moved forward and I discovered Gobbo archers are pretty pants. The Elves vastly superior Quality stat really showed through in these games.
In an attempt to keep the gaming stoke going I fancied facing the Elf mob off against something different so in a furious 5 night flurry I managed to paint up some random Undead types I had lying about. These included possibly one of my oldest figures - a Lich I've had since god knows when - it has been battered about a bit over the years and has lost the original dagger so a bit of a quick fix with a gobo chariot scythe seemed to fit nicely. It painted up OK but time and figure mismanagement hasn't been kind to it! The other fellas in the mob (otherwise known as The Horrors of Slygrin Swamp) were a wraith/spectre miniature I picked up from the bargain bin at BIG and a some swamp zombie dudes from Black Tree. These 3 (Michael, Eric and Terry) were actually pretty fun to paint and had some nice little details, their proddypokeyhooky sticks are really thin and fragile which worries me slightly. Terrible phone pic below (Sorry!).


Extan Slygrin and his band of merry flesh eating chums.

I also picked up this:

Boy this gave me a few flashbacks!

I've been lurking around the Oldhammer forum and many of the excellent related Blogs and some of the 3rd Edition battle reports, especially those on the Warhammer for Adults blog, reminded me that however clunky and intricate the 3rd edtition rules are they really lend themselves well to the type of fantasy gaming I used to enjoy. 3rd edition WHFB was one of my games of choice with my small gaming group back in my teens (and I should probably post up something about that murky period) but I was always the one more interested in it than the others. My original copy actually lasted for some time until a leaky, damp garage at my old house got the better of it and rotted the pages (Unfortunately taking the RT rules with it too, if only I'd known better!).


With my small collection of fantasy figures slowly growing it made sense to me to line up WHFB as a potential rule system, and I really like the army lists (I work with spreadsheets, I may have a small obsession with making lists and adding up points). Plus the models that lend themselves to that period and the Oldhammer ethos are really awesome. I've tried to like some of the new plastics ones, I've even won a few on evilbay that will feature in the small armies I'm planning but the overblown mega-hat stuff that's out these days really does not float my fantasy boat (Longship? Giant Turtle?).


That said I may take a quick spin on the Age of SiggyMarley rules roundabout but mainly because it was free and, yeah, army lists (No points though waaaaahhhh).

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.

Where are we going?

A very good question. Why am I getting back into this now and where do I want it to take me?

Firstly I'm hoping that gaming and painting are something my son will grow to love. Rhys has been diagnosed with Hypermobilty/EDS type 3 which while not life threatening it certainly means he won't be the sportiest of children. He is however blessed with a marvellous imagination and finds the general concept of Elves hilarious ("Pointy ears and bows and arrows dad? Hahahah you are funny").

This all means that hopefully one day we will both be sitting around rolling dice and moving small men about for fun. Or painting things proper colours (To be honest the purple and yellow wolf kinda looked cool).

Personally I've got to an age where I don't care what other peoples perception of me is. I skateboard, surf, play touch rugby and drink too much beer. Painting and gaming may be seen as a small mid-life crisis, reclaiming a part of my youth perhaps - and if it is then so be it - like I said I don't care.

In my youth I was your typical GW fanboy, I spent an entire family holiday in Bournemouth posted up in the GW store there playing many games of Blood Bowl and it didn't seem abnormal. Why my parents entrusted my daycare to a group of wierd men in a shop though I'll never understand, different times indeed.

Now I'm more interested in smaller, easier to understand rules - I've stumbled across Songs of Blades and Heroes from Ganesha Games and my initial goal is to create a few warbands and play a few solo games using these rules.

All this refreshed interest was provoked by my friend Mark, an excellent painter of minis and part-time Goth dancer. Check out his blog here for some incredible goodness. I stumbled across an old box of lead and saw a few pieces in there that he might be interested in, these were packaged up and sent off and I've just recieved a few back which I will blog about later.

Next post tho I'm afraid you'll have to be subjected to my first few forays back into painting. Sorry.