Blood Bowl Nurgle's Rotters

I may have mentioned a number of times that I Like Blood Bowl (and zombies, and sci-fi, post-apocalypse, and fantasy, and WW2, well the list goes on). The truth is that I am a bit of a Blood Bowl Fanboy. Whilst I have loved all the figures that have come out, the only team to come out so far that I haven't had in the old edition was the Goblins, perhaps my least favourite team.

Nurgle is not a team I have ever owned. If I recall correctly it was a team that wasn't actually a team in the last official rules but an officially sanctioned team in the Living Rule Book. It did get supported with a team but these were just figures from other existing teams. Correct me if I am wrong. Now that it is here I was going to be a must buy.

So with Nurgle being on the market, I asked for a box for my birthday last week. Due to a slight misunderstanding I ended up with only one sprue. No problem really. When I get round to it, I might buy another box set or I might use some of the Chaos All stars that I already have to fill in any gaps. Sadly I expect that I will always have a few spares.

Reality is usually a hard place in my experience and I have not been a big fan of GW over the years. Most of the nineties I referred to them as the Nottingham Company due to their absolute betrayal of what I thought they stood for when they stopped stocking every product not made by them. This quickly seguey ed into grumbling about the figures. Whilst I am not a big fan of snap-fit the quality and the poses are just getting better and better.

Maybe I Am Not So Niche After All - I Am Not A Nerd Anymore

I have been told several times lately that as I play board games, war games, RPGs and computer games that I nerd. If you actually knew me, other than the glasses, I am guessing that as long as I wasn't wearing my Atari T-shirt (which is a bit of a give away) that I probably don't come across as a nerd.Some may argue about that with me but what the hell.

What I am about to say might not be news.

Nerds are now everywhere. 

There were more women in my FLGS than men the last time I was in there (a rare occasion admittedly). My local bookshop (and the chain it belongs to) have been stocking board games for years and used to sell RPG stuff as well. Within ten miles of where I live there is just less than ten shops that sell games. You can play games in three or four different pubs within a similar radius.

This week things are changing again in a way that seems to me at least to be a paradigm shift. I happened to turn on Radio 4 on Sunday and this week The Archers are going to feature a board games night. No less nerdy maybe. The Archers is no exactly mainstream itself. But the real killer came today. When I went to the supermarket.




Today I found out that Tesco is selling Pandemic and Codewords. These are two "mainstream" euro-board games. Whilst not the best prices I have ever seen for the games they are not far off a good prices. I mean Tesco for flip's sake. My hobby is now so mundane that you can pick it up with the bread and milk. Where does this end? Will there be a copy of The Walking Dead - All Out War there next week? Will Games Workshop have a shop in shop by the end of the month? Will Warlord be selling boxes of Africa Corps just in time for Christmas? I guess not. But still.

The world of gaming is changing. "What a world. What a world."

Blood Bowl - The Champions Of Death

It is fair to say that I am a bit of a Blood Bowl fanboy. Even when it was out of production I was still buying the odd team of eBay. I have my favorites but my first love was The Champions of Death. When the third edition came out I was too skint to buy it so I made my own out of what I had available. Possibly my first conversion project and it has to be said it was pretty bad.

The latest release from GW is my old favorite. If somewhat slow they are a reasonably robust team that can soak up punishment. What I liked about them the most was the ability to resurrect a the team players from your opponents if you killed them, which happens a lot more often. This means you can fill up your players bench quite quickly in a competition. Sadly it's skeletons not zombies.

Having only seen a video and one picture I have already presumed that this will be my next project when I get round to buying it at least. Whilst I am a big fan of the whole range, this team, like the other recent releases, is amazing. The YouTube Video is pretty good but I am still hoping to see decent close up pictures.

It's My Birthday

I frequently talk about Dave Gorman when it's my Birthday and his view on whether or not you get presents or gifts and this year I am happy to say it has been a lot Osprey published gifts. What do I mean by the difference between presents and gifts?

Possibly the most disturbing picture of all time

We have all had gifts, the perennial favorites seem to be socks and scarves. Gifts are usually something that you might use. Or Maybe not. Socks and scarves are the epitome of gifts. I mean who doesn't need a few more socks and a scarf on cold days? I have a set of shot glasses somewhere that were a gift. They are still in their original box, unopened, which is currently in another box, in another box in the attic. Gifts are not fun, they lack imagination and are usually given out of a sense of duty with the easiest thing be brought.

Presents are something special. People have gone to an effort to find something that you like, even if it's just asking you what you want. This even applies to things that make you go WTF? They were brought because someone knows you, often better than you know yourself. They buy something because they know it will make you happy. There is a thought process in there somewhere.

So today I am feeling more than a little bit blessed.

Oddly zombies feature pretty highly. I like zombies. The fact that other people know that I like zombies might not be a surprise. I even got some miniatures. What more could a guy ask for? Well Osprey books is always a good one and then there were a few other books too. I even got some Star Wars lego.  What a day.

I am hoping that my dry patch is over now. Maybe there won't be another Three Months Gone post in January. Now have a few books to review and maybe even play the odd game. What I would really like to be doing is a work bench update like this one but I don't currently have a bench to work on. Maybe that needs to change.

Three Months Gone

Has it really been three months since I posted? What started as a promising year on the blogging front has not fared quite so well. Time has been short and I haven't really had a chance to look in on the blog for a good long while. Partly because I haven't had time to do anything worth posting. Money is tight and I haven't really got a paint station, time to paint or anything new and interesting to concentrate on. For a while I couldn't even find any paints or brushes but that is not the case any more. So rather than post something dull, I haven't put anything up.

It is mainly my fault, well after a fashion. So I can't really complain.

I wish I had saved the Yossarian face-palm image for this post

But here I am. I am back on the laser cutting journey after losing all faith in the process. Having waited for three months for the damn machine to turn up I found out that it was somewhere, lost in transit. The suppliers seemed unable to tell me anything other than it was probably in transit and was maybe, almost certainly, possibly, somewhere near the Suez canal. Given that there was thousands of pounds involved they seemed ridiculously keen to give me my money back.

So this is the way things happen. I put a huge amount of effort in and then something way beyond my control destroys the plan. Fortunately I haven't wasted much in money but I have wasted the whole of the summer. As money has been tight since then this has been a bit of a bummer. I get well and truly pee'd off with existence and try to move on to something I think is a bit more practical. Like finding a real job. Which, given my current personal circumstances, is way more difficult than it sounds. Another month down, and a hundred jobs applied for and I am still struggling to find some work.

It is starting to feel like I am in a bit of a decaying orbit. This is better than it sounds. Sooner or later I am bound to hit the ground and then things will start happening. Rather than trying the economy route I am thinking maybe it's time to push the boat out. My problem all the way along has been that I am looking at getting a laser from China. Despite ordering from England, Germany and Belgium they are always from fecking China. This is potentially an expensive option but I am hoping I can lease one in the short term. Given that I am looking at an expensive machine I am no longer looking at a shed as a base of operations. Instead I think I have found a cheap place to set up a business.

In recent weeks I have done a bit of gaming again so I should post some stuff about that soon. Having found some cheap stuff in a game shop in Southport (which is a good FLGS) I have doubled my gaming spend for the year so far. On top of that I am expecting some goodies for my birthday so it might be worth watching this space.