Tuesday 31 December 2013

A new year begins

It's the end of 2013 and hobby wise not much has happened in the last month. I'm still waiting on my main hobby Christmas present to arrive but that won't be for a couple months yet. I am however posting this from next years Christmas present, a swanky new iPad mini. It's kinda hobby related as I plan on using it to post updates during the America trip. Anyway, on to plans for 2014. The only hobby resolution I'll be making is to do something hobby related each day I'm off work and unless it's a tournament just playing a game doesn't count. So starting tomorrow the pile of untouched lead and plastic starts to get smaller. I've a couple Warmachine games planed in the next month or so but no dates set yet so more information probably once they are played. Smogcon is fast approaching so there's more painting to be done for that and practice games to be played. Add in starting Wild West Exodus, Bolt Action and Firestorm Armada should see me busy for a little while. Next post as previously promised pictures of my painting from the recent journeyman league.

Happy New Year everyone.

Monday 2 December 2013

Slow blog is slow

So it's been a while. A few things have changed in the past five months. The biggest hobby change is me getting paint on a good number of my Trollbloods but more on that in a bit. To get this blog back on track this post is going to be a recap since the last post.

Since the last post I've been re-elected as Chairman of Crow Valley Crusaders. I was joined on the committee by one returning official and three new officials. If all goes to plan we can keep the club progressing in the right direction and help the club grow. I've also started volunteering with the Gaming Club Network for the South Wales region. The aim is to get clubs in the region to interact more and should see me visiting them more.

Since the last update I've added a good chunk of models to my Trollbloods. I now own all but three of the factions casters and have at least one of each heavy beast. I've also added a couple of support options. My next step in purchases is to complete the caster collection before moving on to more units. the biggest change has been getting a lot of models painted. Thanks to the motivation provided by Alun getting a lot of stuff painted for his Khador force for the clubs Journeyman league I managed to get seven casters, five heavy beasts, two light beasts, five solos and ten whelps painted. Pictures to come in another update. I also learnt a lot during the journeyman as I exclusively ran Runes of War throughout the league using the alternate battlebox. The plan is to expand the list up to 50 points and once the second half of my order comes through I'll have all four Runeshaper units I need for it.

The last real update for this post is about a visit to Mantic's open day on Saturday. Myself and two of the guys from club set off at 6am for Nottingham to pick our Deadzone pledges. In addition to Ronnie from Mantic Warren and Lloyd from Beasts of War and Alessio Cavatore were all in attendance. By random luck we were at the front of the collection line when Beasts of War went past filming the release and accosted Ronnie for a tour around the warehouse. On top of Mantic, Warlord Games, Hawk Wargames and Mongoose Publishing were present. In addition to a Deadzone pledge reward I walked away from the day with a 1000 point starter for Bolt Action and a copy of Dropzone Commander I'm splitting with one of the other guys that went. Not a bad haul between the three of us as you can see from the state of my car boot at the end of the day.


Possibly the biggest surprise of the day was seeing a couple of boars from the Boards and Gears kickstarter being used. All three of us were very impressed with the quality of the boards and look forward to getting them and using them.


Picture taken from the Mantic Facebook album if you want to see more of the day. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for the rest of the day as we had to head back to club for our Longest Night event and over 24 hours of straight gaming time. The inital part of the night saw the three of us that attended to open day sorting through our pledges before numerous games of Super Dungeon Explorer and Zombiecide in addition to the normal games we play and copious amounts of pizza for dinner and breakfast from a local burger van. From leaving home at 6am Saturday and getting back at just gone 6pm Sunday I'd call it a  successful 36 hours.