Another year over and a new one just begun

First miniature of the year painted:

It's "Slug Eat Your Face", sculpted by Tom Meier to a concept by his son Theo Meier (the description of the design process, which can be read here, is very amusing). This was a Christmas Present - one of a number of very well selected Christmas gifts from Ral Partha Legacy and Bad Squiddo Games. It's nice to have a family who know the weird things you like.

Last year was a hard year but in spite of that - or maybe because of it - it was my best year for painting ever. I managed to get 110 miniatures painted this year! Some of them even to a decent standard! Far and away a record for me. However... I managed to acquire 195 miniatures. So, taking into account the one I destroyed for a fimir conversion, that still leaves me 84 miniatures in the red.

Sometimes admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing it... So, I have one core Oldhammer new year's resolution for 2022:

To paint more miniatures than I acquire.

That's it. That's my one resolution. Oh aye, and to finally finish and play the Dolgan Raiders (BOYL22 will finally be the year!)... And to get on with the High Elves that have been waiting nearly 25 years now... and I have a few other ideas up my sleeve too... Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just off to have a look on ebay.

I'm not dead! (Happy New Year...)

I realise it's been a long silence on this blog. While I'd love to claim that although I've been quiet online, in real life I've been more involved in wargaming than ever, that'd be a lie. In fact, I only played one game in the whole of 2018... the Battle of Gallow Cross in Warlord Paul's Daggervale Campaign, a bloody mess of a battle against Nik Dixon's Skaven - my Sea Elves held back the tide of vermin with minimal rank and file causalities (though the loss of all nobles, who nobly sacrificed themselves), but not before the blighted ones had gnawed their way through the civilian population we'd allegedly arrived to help.



So if it wasn't much of a year for gaming, what about for painting? In fact, beyond tidying up the Sea Elves (which I'd more or less finished for BOYL2017, but in a rush), the only miniatures I painted from scratch in 2018 were the two creepy weirdos from the Circus of Corruption. This is a pretty appalling state of affairs, but unfortunately I'm not the kind of person who finds it easy to paint unless I have a game to prepare for. And living up in Orkney at the moment, there aren't many games to prepare for (especially seeing as my research means that I usually miss BOYL... though hopefully not this coming year).

What I really need to do is find some oldhammery wargamers in Scotland, as I'm regularly down in Fife with my work. Or get people to come for a wargames weekend up here on Orkney (come on, you know you want to!)

But of course, there's an even more obvious solution to my gaming and painting drought. More games with my son (and my missus if she's interested). Which is why at this very moment the smell of primer is in the air...

What on earth are those blurry blobs, I hear you ask? Now, even with such a dreadfully blurry photo, it should be fairly obvious to every gamer of a certain age what those minis are and what they represent. Yep, I think it's time I introduced my family to the sublime joy that is HeroQuest!

Happy New Year to you all!

The year in review, and the year ahead

Failure is important. Failure makes us stronger. And it is for that reason that I took the important step of failing to achieve any of my 2015 resolutions. Well ok, with regards to Goal 6, "collect more McDeath miniatures", I did buy a couple more and I've even painted up Arka Zargul and a handful of miners:

But the progress other people have made on their McDeath projects puts my slowly slowly approach to shame. (And have you seen the stupid prices McDeath stuff is going for nowadays?)

I have a reasonably good excuse for my failure, as excuses go. A lot of my new years resolutions were tied up with going to BOYL in the summer - and then it turned out that I wasn't able to make it. Instead, I went to work in Mongolia - and even managed to get a couple of games in out there with my son!

More generally, though, I got a fair bit of gaming in during 2015. My gnomes got their first outing just after the new year; 3 games of the "Warlord Paul presents..." series of adventures in Albion (see battle reports here and here), and even a couple of games in November and December that I haven't had the chance to write up yet. In terms of painting, what I lack in terms of quantity of output, I made up for with a lot more diversity in previous years: humans, gnomes, dwarves, elves, undead, fimir, and even an Ambull.

As I was just saying in the comments section, one of the nicest things about this kind of narrative gaming is the opportunity it gives to collect and paint up a range of quirky figures. If you're just collecting 2,000 point armies, or whatever, there's no room in your plans for the wandering monster, or the sobbing peasant wiping tears from his eyes with a dirty hankie. Whereas since I've got into this style of gaming, I've massively diversified my collection.

So I'm going to go for a streamlined set of new years resolutions. Just 3 in fact:

1) Get my Sea Elf army into shape

This was my number one goal last year, because the sea elves were what I was planning on taking to BOYL for the nautical fun and games there. No BOYL, no motivation for progress. But I really want to have this army ready for me to use, it would give me a lot more flexibility for future gaming. So this will be the year I get it done. Honest.

2) Play more games with my son

My son seems ready for a few more games with toy soldiers, and we want to continue the story we started at Labger. He's instructed me on what he wants painted up for the next game, so watch this space. Might get him doing some painting too.

3) Paint up a Frostgrave warband and play some frostgrave with OGRE

Frostgrave seems to be spreading around the oldhammer community like an outbreak of norovirus. I got a copy of Frostgrave for Christmas, and I'm very excited. I've chatted with Whiskey Priest and he's putting together a warband too, so we hope to get started with a campaign relatively early in the new year. I'll be posting on the oldhammer forum in the next few days to try and make plans with the rest of the OGRE.gamers.

Happy new year to all, and best of luck with your plans in the year ahead!

Belated New Year's Resolutions

Feeling a bit fed up at the moment. Fractured my arm on Friday and so can't really paint. Well, I can, but it's painful and even less precise than usual. But I can type. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to get around to posting about my game-related New Year's Resolutions. Ok, it's late, but most people fail with their resolutions within a few days of the new year, maybe holding off on them for a while like I'm doing increases the likelihood of success?

First, let's see how I got on with last year's goals:

Goal 1: Collect and paint a chaos warband for the OGRE meeting
Errr... well OGRE never got around to having a warbands game, so I have the models for the warband I rolled up, but never painted them up. Ooops. Well, at least OGRE has met up a couple of times, with more meetups in the pipeline, so that's a plus. Just not got round to playing a chaos warbands game!

Goal 2: Paint all of the Heroes for Dungeonquest
Oh dear. Made absolutely no progress on this either. In fact, I was in the process of painting the ninja, Tori Jima, to include in a game of Ronin with Whiskey Priest and the OGRE lot. But the aforementioned buggering up of my arm has put paid to that, for now anyway.

Goal 3: Collect a force for Doctor Who: Invasion Earth, and take on Thantsants and his wonderful Doctor Who collection

Finally! Something I actually accomplished! I got this done and played a wonderful mini-campaign up at his place in the lake district last Easter. Great times. Never did put a battle report up of these 3 games (arrgh, failure in the midst of success), though the reports for 2 of the 3 scenarios are over at Thantsants' blog: War of the Daleks, and One of our Dictators is missing... - but looks like we're missing the Grand Finale. Well, I have the notes and the photos, one day, maybe...

Goal 4: Make Clan Slea a force to be reckoned with


Plenty of work done here. Lots of new fimm infantry and even some artillery pieces. They've been in some great fights at The Poison River and The Siege of Avalone (at Bring Out Your Lead 2014). They're not finished (is any army truly finished?) - for a start, I still have to paint up several of the Nick Bibby fimir - but they're still a pretty impressive lot. However, there was one thing Clan Slea never got around to...

Goal 5: Fight Warlord Paul in a sequel to "Trouble at Nobridge"
It's now over a year since this very fun game at Blog-Con, which left so many loose threads crying out for a sequel. But I've never got around to organising it. I do have a suitable miniature for the captured Elf Elementalist, however, so I haven't given up hope entirely!

Goal 6: Collect more McDeath miniatures
Not doing too badly on this. I have the Monster of Loch Lorm, and 6 of the character models. In terms of painting, I've painted up the monster and a unit of suitable clansmen (the citadel models along with Warlord and other minis), and they're growing into a nice characterful warband in their own right.

See the fella tossing his caber there?

I'm not abandoning this task for the next year - I'll pick minis up when I can find them - but prices are getting stupid on ebay, so I'm not going to make it such a priority that I bankrupt myself.

Goal 7: Attend the Oldhammer Weekend
And what a weekend it was!




Ok, so having evaluated the past year's successes and failures, what are my top priorities for the coming year?

1) Build up my Sea Elf army

The first thing I did when I got back into this hobby was to paint up sea elves. This year, I want to build them up to a sizeable force in their own right. In terms of what I own but have yet to paint up: I have archers for the ship's company, wardancers, and a unit of Lothern City Guard who I think will work well in this force; in terms of what I still need to buy, I'm looking for another bolt thrower, and also pondering whether I could incorporate some of White Knight's wonderful sea elves.

2) Send my Sea Elves off to sea
With plans afoot for naval battles at BOYL15, I need to get some suitable boats for my sea elves to conquer the waves.

3) Take a journey to the East
I want to try and organise a game with an Eastern feel at BOYL15, exploring some of the lesser known territory of the Warhammer world and getting people to bring Cathayans, Nipponese, eastern-looking Hobgoblins, that sort of thing. With that in mind, I've been collecting minitures with an oriental feel, some of which will also see usage in games like Ronin and Fistful of Kung Fu.

4) Play The Dolgan Raiders scenario

Related to the above goal, I want to collect a force of Dolgan steppe warriors and face off against Hobgoblins in this classic scenario from the Second Citadel Journal. I have a handful of Mongol-looking old citadel minis, and so I'm looking for suitable proxies for the rest of the army.

5) Continue to collect for McDeath - without breaking the bank
I'm still going to pick up McDeath minis when I see them and when they're not expensive, but a lot of the rank and file I want to collect for McDeath will be suitable proxies. Last year, I picked up plenty of clansmen to go with the old citadel; this year my priority is to collect and paint militant dwarf miners to fight alongside Arka Zargul.

6) Paint all of the Heroes for Dungeonquest
Well, maybe I'll get around to it this year, eh?

New Year, New Year

2013 was a good year for getting into the Oldhammer scene, dusting off some old minis, painting some new (old) ones, etc. So in the first full year since I've come out of a wargaming coma, what can I hope to achieve? Seeing a flurry of posts about people's new years gaming resolutions, I thought I'd get in the party spirit while ambitions still run high:

1) Collect and paint a chaos warband for the next OGRE meeting

The plan for the next OGRE regional meetup is to have some Realms of Chaos games. I rolled up my warband a few weeks ago, and have been rummaging around for suitable minis, and ordering some off ebay to plug any gaps. I now have most of the minis I need (about 10 of the 14 there'll be in my warband) and work has started on the painting so I should be ready by the end of the month.


2) Paint all of the Heroes for Dungeonquest

I already have one painted (Serellia of Zimendell), and I'm working on another at the moment; so slowly but surely I'd like to paint all 12 of the Heroes for Dungeonquest.


3) Collect a force for Doctor Who: Invasion Earth, and take on Thantsants and his wonderful Doctor Who collection

Thantsants has a wonderful collection of Doctor Who minis - go on, take a look, it's a fantastic horde! After some drunken discussioning in Nottingham, I decided to collect some Doctor Who minis myself to take him on in a couple of games, maybe even a linked mini-campaign. In some ways this should have been a 2013 goal, as it really relates to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, but I suppose the 50th anniversary having taken place in November, the 50th anniversary year really runs 23 November 2013-22 November 2014? Well, regardless, Black Tree miniatures weren't super efficient in getting the minis to the right place at the right time, so this'll probably be something I work on heading towards the Easter vacation. More news to come when the lead arrives...


4) Make Clan Slea a force to be reckoned with

The recent battle reports from Blog-Con (here and here) showed off the verybeginnings of my Fimir clan - but there's a long way to go before it can really be called an army. So I have various plans for expansion. Without spoiling the surprise by going into too much detail, I'm thinking definitely 2 more units of rank and file on 25mm bases - and possibly a further unit mounted on 40mm bases which can include the larger scale Nick Bibby sculpts (if I can find and afford more of them) and forgeworld sculpts. I'm also thinking about various bells and whistles that would really round out this army, but I'll leave the revelation of plans for another time...

5) Fight Warlord Paul in a sequel to "Trouble at Nobridge"

This wonderful scenario at Blog-Con (in which the civilians of Nobridge defeated the Fimir menace) ended with a number of loose threads; a dirach in the body of a warlord; a unit of diseased wardancers, doomed never to return home; and worst of all, a Elven elementalist captured and left to the devices of the vile Clan Slea. So will there be a blockbuster all special effects sequel? You bet there will, just as soon as I've built up a bit more of the fimir force. As this will probably be an ambush of the Fimir settlement, I'll also want to think a bit more about what the settlement should look like and get some terrain pieces ready.

6) Collect more McDeath miniatures

I have been slowly but surely piecing together a set of McDeath miniatures. Sometimes original citadel; but I'm also interested in stand-ins both for reasons of keeping down the cost, as well as injecting a bit of interest to the collection. I hope to be a lot closer to completing this collection by the end of the year. I don't plan on starting work painting this collection, unless for some reason part of it would become a useful element in other plans - after all, you never know when you might need warriors in kilts.

7) Attend the Oldhammer weekend

My understanding is that this year's Oldhammer weekend will be at the Foundry in Nottingham on the 9th and 10th of August. Greatly enjoyed last years tomfoolery, so just need to hop on a train and get there again. Sounds simple, right? Well, in essence it is, as long as I'm in the country at the time! But as this is many months away, I don't yet have any clear plan as to what I'm going to play there (my initial plan of "whatever Padre is GMing" probably won't work as Padre is saying he can't make it that weekend... boooooo hisssssssss), so who knows what new plans and projects this will commit me to, throwing everything else into disarray!


Such are my plans. New let's see how the year goes... All the best to you and yours!