A blog I said, that'll definitely be a good idea
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A blog I said, that'll definitely be a good idea, I'm a proper nerd and I can surely write about nerd stuff? And then I promptly forgot about it for months and months, until a few days ago when I was told that the website was ready for me to start posting my blog...
I've thought long and hard about what the contents of this blog should be about. Warhammer and miniatures gaming perhaps? Maybe the books I'm reading? The TTRPG's (Table Top Role Playing Games) I'm playing. Or just The Other Places news and information. Perhaps whisky? In the end, paralysed by choice I made no decision and decided to write about it all, apart from the whisky (for now).
Now, who am I to be writing all this, what are my bona-fides as they were? I don't even know how old I was when my grandpa gave me some of those little metal historical soldiers (Google informs me these are Westair pewter soldiers) and my love of gaming was born. I was soon buying/craving the little green plastic soldiers to fight mighty battles against my brothers. And then it happened, I got to play Baldurs Gate 1, the original on PC. I was hooked. I've been playing Warhammer for over 20 years after picking up a service station White Dwarf Magazine (It had High Elves on the front cover) and DnD as well as other TTRPG's for just slightly less time. I dabbled in MTG, I was a PC and console gamer for some time. And I read a fair bit as well. All the books in the hall at The Other Place are mine with a very few exceptions, and those are just the ones that I am willing to sell/display or haven't replaced with other versions.
Let's start with some Warhammer and other miniature games - there's always loads happening there. I'll start with a disclaimer, I haven't played Warhammer since they killed off The Old World, something I'm still butthurt about and I'm unlikely to get over anytime soon, even with the release of TOW. I have however played The 9th Age (T9A) which was meant to be the square based spiritual successor to 8th edition. I love it, or at least loved it. It's model agnostic, so you can use any models you like so long as they look vaguely like what they are meant to be on the tabletop. There was even a guy that used lego knights to make a tournament army some short time ago. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way of a good wargaming session, and some of the games can take 4 hours or so to set up and play, which combined with the complexity of the rulesset meant I was rarely having time to play.
Let's start with some Warhammer and other miniature games - there's always loads happening there. I'll start with a disclaimer, I haven't played Warhammer since they killed off The Old World, something I'm still butthurt about and I'm unlikely to get over anytime soon, even with the release of TOW. I have however played The 9th Age (T9A) which was meant to be the square based spiritual successor to 8th edition. I love it, or at least loved it. It's model agnostic, so you can use any models you like so long as they look vaguely like what they are meant to be on the tabletop. There was even a guy that used lego knights to make a tournament army some short time ago. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way of a good wargaming session, and some of the games can take 4 hours or so to set up and play, which combined with the complexity of the rulesset meant I was rarely having time to play.
Enter skirmish games, I played Mordheim back in the 'day', and I've been playing a bit of Killteam recently, could this be the solution to my wargaming problem? One of my brothers has been desperate to play Frostgrave or Rangers of Shadow Deep. I've had a cursory look over the rules, and they seem good, like they may scratch that itch, but Frostgrave doesn't have warband progression, and Rangers doesn't have wizards - it seems a terrible dilemma, perhaps we could smosh them together in some unholy hybrid combination and end up with the game I'm really wanting?
Around the same time as all this was being looked at my friend P, who I met through T9A and my brothers has recently gotten into a couple of games, Moonstone, a game full of beautiful miniatures and fun mechanics, as well as Forbidden Psalm, a smaller warband skirmish game that seems kinda grittier, in a kind of John Blanche style. Google relably informs me it's compatible with Mork Borg, which is a game I've heard of, I think? Sounds Warhammer-y at least? Probably not. Anyway, P and G were having a bunch of games and seemed to be having a blast, they were scenario based, on a small board and seemed to play fast (I like fast, short attention span if I'm not actively doing something). The warbands seemed fun and the rules were simple. I'm never sure how I feel about simple rules, I like some crunch, tables and statistics. The hours I've spent staring at the weapons chart in DnD 3.5 PHB, but I digress... Anyway, I went over and had a proper nosey, it looked good. I was intrigued. I got the rules, and picked out some likely models from my pile of shame to become a warband. Now all I have to do is paint them, and I will be ready to play!
In shameless self service I've also invited P to come back to The Other Place in January to run a demo session of Forbidden Psalm - turns out he's running the Scottish tournament in Edinburgh next year and is quite a fan of the game. He's even got the games creator coming up from Wales to take part. Sounds awesome. If anyone is interested we'll be running the Forbidden Psalm on Sunday 19th January. More information will come out in due course on our Facebook, and perhaps the website's calendar (if we ever get it up and running). If you'd like to express interest or sign up, let us know and we'll write it down somewhere!
This seems like a good amount of information for a first blog post, I realise I haven't even covered sci-fi miniature wargaming (looking at you 40k) or anything else. I'll try for that next time. Also, I quite fancy doing a few sections on DM-ing and basically how I approach game set up and run a game. I'm not an expert, but I've been doing it for a few years now, so I might have something interesting to say, even if it's only as an example of how not to do things...
This seems like a good amount of information for a first blog post, I realise I haven't even covered sci-fi miniature wargaming (looking at you 40k) or anything else. I'll try for that next time. Also, I quite fancy doing a few sections on DM-ing and basically how I approach game set up and run a game. I'm not an expert, but I've been doing it for a few years now, so I might have something interesting to say, even if it's only as an example of how not to do things...
Anyway, cheers for now.