Another Milestone

For just over eight months I have been going at the blog pretty much every day. For the most part it has been fun although it has been hard work on a few days. Today it has not been so bad. I just posted about a game that is very dear to my heart and it brought back a lot of positive memories. On a day to day basis, it keeps me focussed on what I am doing and gives me some sort of purpose.

Just after midnight here, I hit 400,000 hits. This helps. It reminds me that I am not talking to myself, sadly that doesn't mean I'm not mad.

Tunnel & Trolls

My best mate called me up out of the blue the other day and we were talking about all kinds of stuff. Somehow Tunnels & Trolls came up in the conversation and he was telling me about how it was out in print again. Not only that but there were plans for a SF version as well. This would put it at the eighth or ninth edition I think.

This is not a picture of my copy, it's much more beat up

Way back when, sometime around 1983 or 1984 I think, I was reading a wargaming magazine. In it was an advert for a for a shop called Games Of Liverpool, now sadly long since gone. I must have spent hours pouring over this advert (and the one for Esdevium) as it had all sorts of wonderful things in it, but what to buy? I eventually settled on Tunnels & Trolls. Having no real idea what it was about did not disturb me. It disturbed my dad who was working in Liverpool at the time and had to go and buy it for me.

For the next few weeks my head was not out of the books I got, in particular it was the solo adventure Sword For Hire that I read through over and over. The book went everywhere with me. Today I found the copy I had and the cellotape that just holds it together has seen better days, much like the book it is still just holding together. The rulebook fared better despite losing the cover on its binding before the end of 1986. I must have spent days going through the solo adventure books and I didn't have that many of them at the time.

Today I am still playing RPGs. Maybe not as much as I would like but I would still say that this is a major part of my life. Much of my figure painting is geared towards table RPG. Whilst T&T is not my "go to" any more it has certainly had a big effect on the way I play games.

Blood Bowl Human Blitzers And Throwers

Just having a lunch break so I thought I would take a moment to show what I have done so far today. Four blitzers and two throwers. Although I haven't quite finished the linemen there is just a few bits of detailing, varnishing and transfers to be done and I might as well do all the figures together.

Early stage WIP

I'll have a few figures left over and as I have said before some might end up in a Nurgle Team. As there are a few Star Players out there that don't seem like they are coming out soon I might have to do something about it. I am thinking Helmut Wulf and Zara the Slayer. These could be conversions of some of the figure I already have. I could certainly see me chopping off the ball hand of one of the spare throwers and replacing it with and with a chainsaw/chainsword. Zara might need a little padding in the right places and some sculpted hair coming out the back of her helmet.

Although they are still at a very early stage they should progress quite quickly. Assuming I don't get distracted by the Skaven team has arrived. For the cost of one box set I have managed to get five sprues of Skaven of eBay. This gives me the players for a full Skaven team and all the players for the Underworld team when I get round to that.

And speaking of conversions. That leaves me with a few extras that I cannot use (a thrower and a blitzer) but I can see conversions to some of the star layers that aren't out yet, such as Hakflem Scuttlespike, Fezglitch (I have a Black Tree Figure that might do for this) and Skitter Stab Stab (who should be easy).

Human Linemen

For a long while I have had a thing about Blood Bowl. It is probably thirty years since I played any other GW wargame (although I have played some of the old board games). With the Orc Team more or less finished, it's time to give them some opposition. The plan is to go through the teams in order or purchase. The birthday list has a few purchases with some Star Players so I will cross my fingers and see what happens. There is no way that I would spend all the money that the death roller would cost on myself and the Skaven have a lot of Star players and extras now.

Human Linemen - They will all be injured soon

The human team is more or less ready, I have a few more Star Players to buy but hopefully they should arrive before I have finished the rest of the players. Whilst I am hoping for a few games out of them, I don't see me playing them competitively. The Orcs, Dwarves, Skaven, Undead and Lizardmen are more my type of thing.

These are the first of twelve linemen I have. My current expectations is to finish them all for this team although I am starting to think in terms of doing a Nurgle or even Norse Team some of them might not get that far that instead.  This would still leave me with nineteen players. A few more Linemen for the Nurgle team might not go amiss if I can get them.

I figured that if I do the boring players first, things would get done quicker. After this it's all four blitzers and a couple of throwers. Then it's the catchers and an Ogre. When the special players arrive I will probably paint them individually and put a bit more effort in.

Gratuitous Work In Progress Shots

What chances I have had today I have spent painting. This should have been a good day for painting as my other half is out of the house for a few days. Trouble is the dog is missing her and has spent a lot of time going mental.

My first six Blood Bowl Human linemen are up. Progress on these has been quick but I have chosen a fairly simple colour scheme (Widnes Vikings' away strip). Compared to the Orc Team, these should be a doddle. Anyway, I have no pictures yet so I will do a bit more work and get some shots up.

The Troll

There is also the Orc Team Troll. This has taken a bit of a back seat for some reason. For a long time I have found large minis a little off putting as projects go (and horses to but I have got better at painting them). Whilst I haven't done much, I have taken the opportunity of having spare paint on my palette to add some details. This makes it officially a background project. The figure is hugely animated and will look really good when finished. My only gripe is that there is a lot of areas on the model that are hard to get to. When he is done he should make a nice addition to the team.

Speaking of background projects, I have three fantasy figures on the go. These are all Frostgrave creatures, a beastcrafter, a golem and an apprentice. These have been on the bench for the best part of a year so I figured that it was time that I at least made an effort with them.

Frostgrave "finest"

I guess the reason why they are taking so long to get done is that they don't current fill any needs, they are just things I like the idea of painting them. So the repeatedly fall to the back of the queue.

Going Mainstream?

I've just read this article that got flagged up on a google + group about Board Games. Apparently board games, especially the kind I like to play (i.e. not monopoly) are not getting increasingly popular. This may explain why I struggle to find so many of them in the shops. I do like playing board games and I can even go and play them in a pub in town.

But this begs the question, if board games are getting more popular, am I getting more mainstream?

For most of my life I have been a gamer of one sort or another, a sci-fi fan, a Star Wars fanatic and just a bit too nerdy for people to take me seriously. Over the course of the last decade though things have started to change. The sort of shops that I frequent (comic books, games, miniatures, models, and the like) used to be full of geeky, bespectacled nerds. Whilst there are still a lot of us about (I lost my beard) they are no longer the only group. There are even girls and more normal people to be found here.

Possibly it's games like Pokemon that have brought more people into the fold in more recent years at least although MTG has obviously had a big effect, The fact that games are more common on the high street has also helped. In my town there is a Games Workshop, Waterstones, my FLGS Netherworld and even Graigner Games (which traditionally sells console games). It's a fairly big town but none of these shops depend on their entire living on games (other than GW). This is odd because most of the towns of a similar size do have a shop that sells a much wider range of games than is available here.

Most of the stuff I play is still pretty much for geeks. If I was on a date, it would not be the sort of stuff I would lead with, It would be a fifth date conversation at least. Nor is it the kind of thing I would generally let work know about. I don't use my real name on here for fear of potential employers googling me. Many of my friends are a lot more open about their gaming activities but then they work in computers and I have spent most of my working life in Local Authorities. Whilst it's not the most mainstream of hobbies it is not thought of as badly as it once was. It's still not so mainstream. So I guess that whilst the world of geekdom is going more mainstream, I am not.

Gnolls Again

Although I am itching to get on with the Human Blood Bowl Team I am a little intimidated by the project. There is a lot of work in there and there is a few more figures to buy as well. Whilst I don't think that is going to stop me starting, it is going to give me the excuse to finish off what I already started.

Work in progress but nearly done

The gnolls were the last project I started before the laser cutting thing. So they have been sat there gathering dust for a while. This is one project I have been putting off because despite how the figures looked online, what I have been getting from the Frostgrave range has been a little below par. There was a lot of quite chunky flash and this seemed to my mind to be making them hard to paint.

Now that I have been painting them again, this seems a little less of a problem. The figures are looking pretty good. These still have a bit of work to do but it is mostly detailing and some work on the base.

My main problem is that the Frostgrave stuff hits my particular gaming niche at least as far at tabletop RPG goes. Whilst these are more D+D, a game I don't really play, they do represent a race I don't have any figures for. As well as their more traditional use, I keep thinking they would do as an enemy race if I ever do get Titansgrave off the ground.

Going back to The New Cruelty, I am pretty much on target to get double the required number of figures