Wow, I’m a year older. Guess I’d better do a review!

As the title suggests I am a year older (and that means me and not the blog) so in the tried and tested tradition of most bloggers on an anniversary of some kind I thought I’d do a review of my efforts since my last birthday.

September 2012 - Septmeber 2013

Well it was quite a significant 12 months in terms of gaming and hobby related bumpf (Yorkshire slang for “stuff”). It was around this time last year that I finally made the decision to abandon GW products completely, my reasons being much the same as many other gamers, bloggers, housewives, employees etc:

• Price increases
• Rules changes
• Change from hobby to profit orientation

I could wax lyrical on the decision however suffice it to say that I have happily not looked back. I had already been playing WAB for a while and still do occasionally, that being the one rule set that still appeals. However I have since broadened my interests into more historical periods and much like most wargamers out there have been overwhelmed with the amount of good material being published, cast, moulded etc. That’s not to say that it wasn’t available previously however it would seem that to this humble bloggers view there has been a sea change in where the £/$/Y/E is being spent and thus a number of smaller companies (one man bands) are benefitting from this bounty.

So where did my hard earned get spent in the last twelve months? Well my list of hobby projects seems to have sky rocketed over this period, with slight deviation into the evil world of WHFB (argh!):

In Her Majestys Name - Ooh where to start. A nice cheap ruleset from Osprey, skirmish based so there’s minimal outlay and the rules writers are active on discussion forums. The epitomy of hobby based wargames in my view and spawned my desire to do a little fictional writing (see Inspector Johnsons Casebook here).

WAB/Clash of Empires - Still playing however not so much CoE as it feels a little like the poorer cousin to WAB. Unfortunately I have too many projects on the go at the moment (Saxons, Early Imperial Romans, Greeks).

Bolt Action - World War 2 skirmish games at their most “Hollywood”. I jumped in feet first on this one when the rules were released, managed to drag a big chunk of our gaming club along as well and will be assisting in a campaign day we’re running in December. The side benefit is it managed to revive my interest in WW2 gaming in general which resulted in :

Flames of War - My disillusionment with GW led me to trade in a big chunk of my rulebooks to Amazon (boo hiss I hear you cry). However I then spent my ill gotten gains on a US Airborne force with some online sellers and have been thoroughly enjoying this revival in a system that big chunks of the gaming populace seem to have abandoned (typical). In a similar vein this leads to:

Lord of the Rings - I know, I said I had abandoned GW. Well it would seem that not entirely although in my defence I would categorise this as New Line/Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings gaming as the imagery comes from the films hence my reason for collecting this. It was also done as a way to demonstrate that you can game fantasy settings on a budget, all my purchases have been from other gamers who need to clear their lead/plastic pile and I have made some mutually beneficial trades.

WFB - Warhammer Fantasy Battle (on a budget). I did this purely as a finger to the ridiculous pricing policy of GW and put together a 1500pts Daemon army for our club tournament. I did badly however won the best painted for my £11.09 army (for my see my article here)

Saga - Still trying to figure this one out however its fun, uses my existing figures and seems different enough for me not to get it confused with other systems.

English Civil War - I started this simply because I picked up a bunch of Warlord Games Parliamentary figures on the cheap. Luckily a fella at our club is a bit of a local ECW buff so ran a small campaign based on the local area using WAB ECW and Pike & Shotte. We’re still finishing this one off!

Naval WW2 - This is a bit of a solo effort by me and I still have no opponents. Not sure what rules I’ll use however I intend on setting up the Hunt for the Bismarck and picked up the Davco models from Skytrex at Triples earlier in the year.

So am I going to complete any of this? Well I am still plugging away at my LoTR models and have opponents at the club on a slow boil (metaphorically speaking). WW2 seems to be my focus at the moment with our upcoming Bolt Action campaign and Flames of War modelling (which I’m thoroughly enjoying). I should have a bit of a modelling update shortly and have been trying to sort out the terrain for a Normandy beach assault for the club so will share that once I figure out the beast way to layout 5 x 6’ boards on a limited budget.

Warhammer On A Budget - where I got the bugs!

After posting the pics of the last project I've been bombarded with requests for clarification on the actual toys I used.  So in true open source, free IP, no copyright and careing and sharing fashion here's a pic of the offending article sat on the shelf in Poundland.

Enjoy!

Warhammer On A Budget Part 2

So after much tinkering, messing and gluing and the occasional splash of paint I have now completed my little Warhammer Fantasy army on a budget (barring two character models which my mate Chris is buying for the princely sum of £0.48p each from the museum giftshop).

I began this in part as a giant screw you to GW (which is kind of pointless as they couldn’t care less) but also to see if I could do it to any level of acceptable quality. I did preview these lovely little creepy crawlies at the club last week as they shall be my Daemons of Chaos army for the tournament this coming Sunday and I was a little shocked at the response:

“So guys what do you think” says I all innocent like

“What are they“ says one, “What do they represent” says another.

“Oh that’s a plague bearer unit, that’s a Beast of Nurgle and they’re Furies”

Choruses of “I’d think they were all swarms, I don’t get it” and “where’s the champion and standard bearer” and “you can’t tell what they are”, oh and this was the best “I wouldn’t play it because they aren’t WYSIWYG!”

So it would seem that there’s a lack of imagination at my club. I did explain that each unit would have a nice little label on the base identifying the unit choice, but that was ignored in favour of the general reply of “it’s not GW”.

Huh?

I really did think this hobby was about imagination however it would seem that there’s a group out there that don’t want to use it but would rather have the “official” imagination foisted on us by a corporate entity aimed at maximising profits for shareholders……….rant rant rant.

Sorry got sidetracked, so without further ado here’s the finished article

The full 1500 pts Daemons of Chaos

Plaguebearers

Ooh look - Standard!

Plaguebearers again

And another Standard!

Beasts of Nurgle

Fleshounds of Khorne

Second unit of Fleshounds

Furies of Nurgle

Nurglings

Sorry for the pics, took them on my phone.

And for reference here's the costs:

6 x pack of childrens toy insects  - £6

Sheet of 3mm balsa wood - £2.10

Mixed sand - Free

Twigs, moss and flock - Free

2 x Auto spray paint - £2

Uhu adhesive - £0.99p

Old GW paints that had dried up - As I was throwing them I’ll say free.

So that’s a grand total of £11.09

Warhammer on a budget.

Have you ever had the urge to do something just to see if it can be done.  Well thats the subject of this post and begins over two years ago when i decided to abandon Games Workshop following the release of Wargaming for Dummies... err I mean Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th Edition. Since the release of that weighty but vacant tome I've played Wfb 8th twice and purchased nothing other than a tin of chaos black spray and stocked up on Devlan Mud wash.

Anyway getting back to my original topic a friend of mine at my local gaming club runs a WFB tournament every year called the Pennine Pillage (it's based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, middle of the Pennines). It's a low points competition and is always good fun so I decided to enter this year however I thought I should do something a little weird.

So this was my self appointed challenge - at a time when a GW fantasy army costs as much as a medium sized nuclear reactor, how cheaply can I put together a 1500 pts army.  Now in previous editions this would have been a doddle - old hands at the game will surely remember the days of between 3 and 5 model armies (argh Tzeentch chariot mage craziness). But that's not for me, I wanted something that was fair and would be interesting to play with. So I could have cruised evilbay, Mantic or even the Bring And Buy at conventions and shows but I thought "no not hard enough".

So how did i overcome this mammoth task I hear you ask. Well first of all I picked a force,  namely daemons as I have the book and for reasons that shall shortly become obvious the models should be easy to source. Then the evil overlords of GW nastiness released a new edition if the army book. As I'm not willing to sell a kidney to by the darn thing I plugged for borrowing a copy of a mate whilst writing a list using Battlescribe (you gotta love it).

Then on to buying the minis.  Here's where it got  fun:

• Five packs of  kids toy insects - £5
• Balsa wood for the bases - £2.10
• Cheap auto spray - £1
• Sand for texturing - free (i nicked it from the the park)
• Paints - Old GW Paints that had dried out.
• Flock and base dressing - some leftovers from a terrain project (so kind of free).

So far so good. All I gotta do is convert it, paint it and label it so my opponents know what the heck each unit is. Below are a couple of pics of the task in progress, I'll post more as i get out completed.

Oldhammer - Just a case of “when I were a kid?” nostalgia?

Recently a small public limited miniature wargames company with a turnover of £131m released a new edition of one of their core games. This new edition featured a number of changes to the rules and as a consequence the way that games played out. These changes resulted in a number of more mature players deciding that they wouldn’t play the new incarnation and began looking for an alternative. Thus Oldhammer was born!

Now the whole ethos of Oldhammer is to play Warhammer 3rd Edition. Sounds easy doesn’t it, nothing to complicated about that I hear you say, unless of course you want the rulebook. Now this is where it becomes tricky because the rules have been out of print since 1992 however I believe you can possibly acquire a pdf download, whether that is legal or not is a different matter (on your head be it!). Luckily I have a copy of the rules and even better this is the first wargame I ever played back in 1988. It is also the most complicated edition of the game that said small company ever released. If you pop on over to the oldhammer blog (link above) you’ll see lots of info. Even better there’s an Oldhammer weekend being run at Foundry in Nottingham - http://warhammerforadults.blogspot.co.uk/p/oldhammer-eventfoundry-2013.html

Also there’s a nice little summary of one man’s (I believe he’s male!) move to Oldhammer here

http://warhammerforadults.blogspot.co.uk/p/why-is-it-called-warhammer-for-adults.html

Anyway (the most used word in blogs after “so”) this isn’t my reason for the post. I actually want to give my own view of Oldhammer and its place in my gaming list. You see I did play a lot of WFB 3rd  as a teen and really enjoyed it however I view the game and my memories of it as a place in time rather than a product. Going back to playing it would be a little like trying to relive those memories and place myself back in that point of time and I’m a million miles away from where I was back then. Additionally I’m not sure I have the time at the moment to relearn the rules and then teach said rules to anyone unfamiliar with it. Please note I’m not debunking the edition nor dissing the guys who have revived this as a valid ruleset - and by valid I mean promoting to other players and building a community that wishes to play and support it.

So all I’m trying to say is that for me it would be reliving my past and would sit firmly in the category of nostalgia. Now back to the first paragraph of the post and the changes made by that not inconsiderably sized PLC to the game I loved. I’ve decide to revert back to 7th edition. There are two reasons for this.

1. The books are still available second hand
2. I really enjoyed it and still know the rules

Now I’m sure there will be people who argue that the game was broken, too easily manipulated or too limiting in its options. And to that I say “its my hobby and I’ll play the way I wish”. If something doesn’t work then I’ll change it and make sure that the people I play are wargamers and not powergamers. I was always rubbish at tournaments anyway. I enjoy the story of the game, the dynamics or trying to defeat numerically superior opponents or just trying to survive.

Therefore in conclusion to this rather rambling post I’d just like to thank Games Workshop for finally setting the threshold that I am not willing to cross and opening up my mind to alternative hobby solutions. And in answer to the title of this post - Yes it is (for me) and unfortunately a number of years have passed since that wonderful memory and I don't want to disappoint myself in trying to get it back.

The king is dead, long live the dead king!