Yes I play Warhammer and AD&D, yes I'm a geek, but are we really that different?

So there I was sitting on a bus travelling home from Hythe reading the latest issue of White Dwarf. It was one article in particular the held my attention. It was a focus on one of the in house painters, and how he got into painting miniatures and his techniques. This got me thinking about what it was that drew me into the hobby all those years ago. Initially it was white dwarf, to be more precise it was Issue 75. I’d already been gaming on and off for a few years and I had just been introduced to a game called The Call of Cthulhu, horror role playing in the 1920’s Issue 75 had a Cthulhuesque picture of the cover and some articles about the game, including a mini adventure. Yes, believe it or not but back then the anaemic short one was indeed a more wider based magazine. The issue also had a couple of painting articles. I soon discovered that a local toy store stocked Citadel Miniatures, so I bought a model and some Humbrol Enamels, Citadel didn’t start producing paints until a couple of years later. Armed with a brush and a very limited pallette I set about painting my very first model. By todays standards it was rubbish, I didn’t know about drybrushing, washing or any of the other methods that I teach the lads at the shop, and because I was using enamels I also needed thinners which meant that I now had to consider where I was painting and I needed to be wary of spillages and naked flames and fumes, It’s so much nicer these days. I still have that first model and I think I may dig it out, strip it and give it a fresh painting using more up to date brushes, paints and methods, actually I have a number of models that could be revisited with 21st century knowledge.
As for 40k what drew me in to that was the release of the first edition of a game called Space Hulk. Set in a dark and distant future, the same one as 40k to be precise, Space Marines Terminators board derelict interstellar craft to carry out mission that range from equipment recovery to cleansing the wreckage of an alien menace known only as Genestealers. Borrowing heavily from the Alien franchise the game was for two players and was very enjoyable, My mates, at the time, and I would play for hours, we once played over a whole weekend starting with the first mission though to the very last one that was published in a copy of WD, this event included all the mission from the two expansion sets as well. Fortunately one of the lads worked in a pizza parlour and arrived late on the Saturday weighed down with various pizzas and cheesy garlic bread. In fact Matts free pizzas became the mainstay of a number of gaming evenings. I then picked up a copy of Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader, and a small Space Marine army. I played for a couple of years, expanding on the army and painting the models until slowly but surely time took it’s toll and friends moved on or moved away and I sold my books and models being certain that I no longer had the need for them. I continued to buy the odd copy of White Dwarf for a while after but, for me the golden age of White Dwarf was over as it had became a purely in-house magazine that no longer carried features on other gaming systems and had even stopped advertising other gaming companies such as TSR and West End Games. I also thought that gaming had gone the way of the dodo due to the release of consoles like Playstation and the Sega Megadrive. Now the games that I used to pay 10p to play were available to play at a moments whim for free and no one was interested in using paper, pencils, funny shaped dice and a little imagination. So I packed away my dice and rule books and set about looking for a new hobby. However gaming has always been one of my favourite things to do with my free time, yes I bought a console and I like the RPG games that are available, but none of them compare to the enjoyment of sitting at a table with some good mates discussing the drawbacks of full plate armour. Eventually I managed to persuade a few friends that shared a love of all things daft to give AD&D a shot and soon my rule books were dusted of and my dice were hitting the table again. Then I became friends with Sue and she had just started stocking GW products and I mentioned that I used to play 40k and might be interested in collecting a small army. Sue suggested that she would like to offer a gaming session to the lads that were buying the models and asked if I still new anyone who had experience at running a gaming group, surprisingly I did, me! I offered to supervise the sessions but the only problem was that as I hadn’t played in a while I’d need a rulebook and maybe some models, the rest is history, here we are five years on and much has changed, 40k 6th edition looms on the gaming horizon, Space Hulk returned with vastly superior models and I have three armies for 40k all in excess of 300 points and, more than 20 years after my first foray into the rather odd world of tabletop gaming I finally have a Warhammer Fantasy Battles army and rulebook.
Over the last 30+ years of gaming I have seen many changes and attitudes to the gaming society, from religious zealots who promised me an eternity  of red hot pitch forks in places that I can’t mention here to people who think that gaming is just.. well.. weird. Despite all the setbacks I think there is still a large community of bearded men who get together a couple of evenings a month to moan about their girlfriends, or lack there of, whilst fiddling with their dice and trying desperately to get a really low AC and as high a THAC0 as they possibly can. For myself there is only one gaming related question that needs to be answered, what is the damage for a polearm with a night watchman on the end?
Until I think of some more drivel to put on here, hopefully with a title, may all you die roll well.

Dreadfleet open box review

Having the good fortune to get my grubby little mitts on a copy of Dreadfleet a little early, I thought I’d share my opinions on Games Workshops most recent publication.

 

The box art is, as expected, excellently printed and easy on the eye. The main image is by John Blanche and it is clear it’s his work, as is the majority of the art in the rule book; all 96 pages feature incredible imagery. The artwork follows through on the game cards.

Three packs in total, two packs of small cards and one pack of larger cards. Around the sides of the inner box are the instructions for building the models and various game accessories.

The box, unopened, weighs in at a little over 2.5 kilos. Yes, I weighed it! Lighter than Space Hulk and a smaller box.

 

 

On to the models, everything that isn’t card or paper is the bog standard grey plastic, those who enjoy painting and building their models are in for a treat. GW has designed the kits along the same lines as Assault on Black Reach, Isle of Blood and Space Hulk so it’s all click fit. The level of detail is easily up to the standard we’ve come to expect from GW plastic and once built and painted you’ll need to pack the models very carefully or masts, flags and other fragile components will end up looking like the wrecks before too long.

The majority of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles races are represented by a ship and the rulebook, rather obviously, has a detailed entry for each of the ten models which includes a background story and details of special rules. Stat lines consist of 6 attributes, Speed, Hull, Crew, Broadside, Handling and armour. I won’t go into detail for the stats; I think I’m pushing it a bit having the game already. The twelve dice are average and there’s nothing special about them, you get 11 ivory coloured and a red one.

It would have been nice if the dice were a little larger and perhaps had a nautical theme, but oh well, maybe there’ll be a limited edition dice set available?

Finally included in the box is the game “board”. Not so much a board as a table cloth, or at least that’s what the missus called it. I don’t think the photo does it much justice by way of showing the design, but you can see where they were going with it. The missus describes it as having the feel of cheap nylon, I think the intent was to give it the look and feel of an olde worlde silk map, I wouldn’t say they failed, that would be harsh, but it definitely doesn’t have a silky feel to it. but it does feel very durable which is the important thing. At 5 feet by 3.5 it’s large but it will fit on a fair sized dining or gaming table, assuming your gaming table isn’t themed, that would make for very rough seas.

Personally I’m looking forward to putting the models together and getting them painted, I’m also keen to start playing. Whilst the rules do look a little complicated I’m sure that it will only take a couple of games to grasp them and blasting your enemy out of the water and sending them to Davy Jones’ locker.

Of course the main question is what are the negatives? As I mentioned above, the dice, I think a little effort could have been put into them, maybe an anchor where the one should be or perhaps a skull & crossed bones. My second gripe is the amount of work involved before you can actually get to play. Of course you can simply snap the kits together and get on with it. But, for me anyway, part of the enjoyment of collecting these games is to paint the models. It’s so much nicer to see painted models in play rather than the dull boring grey of the plastic. The other thing that’s missing, in my humble opinion, are more detailed building and painting instructions. It’s all well and good putting a quick guide on the outer edge of the inner box, but they’re not particularly clear and there’s not a great deal by way of a painting guide. A four page guide would be handy. The only source available is the small photographs in the rulebook or the images on the GW website.

My favourite model in the box? It has to be the Black Kraken, those chaos dwarves and their engineering skills, it’s submersible, can’t wait to learn how that works in the game. I also think GW could have done some of the work for us, with so many models to build and paint, some of the counters and other gaming accessories could have been better presented by casting them in multi coloured plastic, but maybe that’s just me being lazy.

Despite the few negatives I like what I’ve seen and I’m glad I have a copy. I strongly recommend it and I’m sure that it will give you great pleasure both from the hobby side and the game.

Enjoy it me hearties, hoist the main sail and prepare to catch the wind and have your timbers shivered and your buckles swashed.

I’m sorry, but did you really think I’d get through this post without the ubiquitous pirate reference?

Something else I picked up today was liquid green stuff. This is most definitely a WTF moment. Apparently it sets hard and can be worked once set. Sanded, drilled and cut just like the two part putty. To be honest I’m dubious, it looks and smells like extra thick green paint. GW also have a “now you’re taking the p*ss” release this month, a set of files specifically designed for the finecast range. For file read fine emery board, blokey types may not be too familiar with the product, basically it’s finely ground glass/grit/sand glued to a flat wooden stick. They can be bought in a budget priced outlet, the type where stuff costs a pound or less and you can buy about twenty for a quid rather than a possible three for £4, they’ve also bought out a second prep kit that contains two items, one looks like some form of tool for removing flash from finecast models, the second tool in this kit can only be described as an over sized toothbrush, because you clearly haven’t thought of using your girlfriends toothbrush to clean your models.

I’ll post my view on Liquid Green Stuff when I get a chance to use it. My main concern is that it may have a very limited shelf life.

 

Special thanks for this post go out to my secret supplier for the early provision of the game, and to the missus for holding up the game board cloth so that I could take the photo.

Lordy lawks, what a bloomin’ week!

I haven’t been keeping up with blogging, to be honest I haven’t been able to put my mind to it. I should have done a post last Sunday but I was too knackered and sore so I thought I’d do it on Monday instead. bad idea as I was in more discomfort than Sunday. Why, I hear you ask, was I  so ache ridden. Well the reason is that on Sunday I went back to the Western Heights in Dover, this time there were more bods coming along and I had set myself a personal goal of accessing a part of one of the places we saw on our previous visit.

On arrival at Saint Martins car park we learned that some of the chaps were already in the deep shelter, this was a relief as I was sure that it would have been sealed by now. We spent some time exploring the shelter and accompanying Gun batteries before heading down to the Grand Shaft. Whilst exploring the gun placements it was noticed that Saint Martins Battery was running alive with the most annoying creature known to man, a beast so foul and toxic that the mere thought of them sends a shudder down my spine, my hair stand on end and my stomach churn. What vile animals could promote such feelings of dread and repulsion? Children! Don’t get me wrong, not all children are evil minions from a hell dimension, I actually do know a handful that are quite pleasant to be around and I can stand more than ten minutes of. The children that were out in force on Sunday however were the worst kind. CUBS, I assumed that they’d been taken there for a day of history, it seemed as though they’d actually been handed blue smarties and cheap cola on arrival and told to run free like little apes released from a zoo. There were some adults who were alledgedly supervising the little “darlings” by supervising I mean sitting on the floor scoffing cucumber sandwiches and nattering about who’s doing what to who and when*, whilst ocaisionally shouting things like “do be carefull” and “mind you don’t fall”. So wanting to put distance between us and the horrors we headed down to the grand shaft. After walking down a 200 year old flight of steps our ears were assaulted with the yelps and screams of yet more cubs. It transpired that the walk down may not have been in vain, the gates to the Grand Shaft were open, Woo Hoo! We made enquiries about the possibility of going down the shaft, only to be told, by a very glum adult cub that the shaft was only open for the cubs. I looked around at the 40+ kids who were running here and there in a pattern that could only be explained using the chaos theory. It seemed clear to me that they were more interested in playing “hit the small kid with a stick” than the history of their surroundings. So having no luck with Captain Grumpy we headed away from the Grand Shaft and I led the party in search of a Tunnel that I half remembered, sadly my memory painted a better picture of the tunnel so we  made our way towards the engineers tunnel via a route that was last trodden by Raptors, or so it seemed. Fortunately it turns out that badgers are excellent path finders and he soon had us back on track. As we were walking through the early Cretaceous forest I noticed that an access door to the Drop Redoubt was open, my heart stopped. I absolute do not condone vandalism and I would not damage a property to gain access, but if someone else has chosen to make access possible, I would certainly take advantage of it. I mentioned To the Badge that if we could get in, we would go for it. Further along our walk we saw a group from the WHPS (google it) on one of their work days. When we got to them we enquired about the chance of a walk round the redoubt, we were politely told no as there was already a tour in progress and the next one, at 2pm would probably be full, of cubs, and Health and f*****g safety wouldn’t allow us to just wander around on our own. We decided not to wait and headed off to the North Entrance. After scrambling through a very small hole into the drawbridge mechanism pit we tried to find a way of getting up to the top of the fifteen feet wall to further explore the place. We managed to get a fair few of our number up and it was so very worth it. during the explore of the system I took a picture of a hole that I fell down in my now distant youth and we eventually headed out and on to the Detached Bastion where we finished a brilliant days exploring.

That’s about it, no painting or astronomy this last few weeks as Smiffy’s been away with work and family commitments and the sky’s been rubbish.

Hopefully there’ll be something a bit more exciting over the next few days. but before I go I would like to bring something to you attention.

Please visit the website below and read the info then sign the petition. Lets work together to save the little chaps life.

http://www.savelennoxpetition.co.uk/

Thank you