Two weeks leave and high hopes for getting a bunch of hobby done. Yeah, sure. Nah.
I did turn these crafty ball things into hedges, so I guess that is hobby.
It was nice to be off work for a while though.
Here’s to getting some hobby done sometime soon.
There is a new kid on the blogging block: Soul Marmalade. Another project from me, and is intended to create an online presence for a hobby that is mostly not-online. Soul Marmalade has no paint brushes. It is dedicated to words and my efforts as a poet! This is probably the last time I will mention it here at Faith and Steel, which is dedicated to gaming and miniatures.
But, I’m a wee bit excited because I have just released my first book of poems, published by the Melbourne Poets Union as part of their Red Bellied Poets series.
You can get copies by emailing mpu editor-in-chief: tinagiannoukos AT gmail.com
or contact me because I still have some author copies.
Normal services will now resume.
Everyone loves a little internet challenge and I have been enjoying this one started by Borganwald to show people the view from their windows.
My place is set in bushland in central Victoria, in Australia. It feels a bit like bragging, but it is not a bad place to be if you need to isolate. I’m certainly not stuck indoors, and being laid off work (like so many others) I have plenty of time to plant more trees and maybe even get a bit of hobby done.
A shout out to some of the other blogs I’ve seen in my feed: The Imperfect Modeller, Just Needs Varnish, Pat’s. Be sure to check out some of their other posts too. Talented hobbyists all.
Cheers,
D.
As I suspected, work and family really got in the way of my hobby mojo this winter. I have been blogging, just not here. During the footy season, and my wife and I have been recording the ups and downs of the Fitzroy Youth Girls. Great fun, but not relevant to gaming.
I have been getting some gaming and painting done, but I’ve been posting to instagram (using the handle @dave2718). I like instagram, the ease of posting straight from your phone is a very attractive. As a mainly a visual platform I find instagram crosses borders and language more than other social media, so I find myself in a wider and more diverse circle than on other platforms. However, just using the phone often means the photos are a bit dodgy. The phone camera is OK, but shots taken without due care for lighting or a bit of hand-held shake are just not as good in general.
The many groups on FaceBook can also be engaging but can feel a bit too transient.
Most blog posts are a bit more thought out compared to FB, and I like that.
With Bolt Action version 2 on the way and Konflikt ’47 just released and Arcanacon not that far away (by my slow painting pace), there is plenty of hobby in the pipeline.
So, here’s hoping to a bit more blogging, painting and playing in the near future.
I’ve enjoyed a bit of a hobby renaissance these last few months. Unemployment is not all bad. But the real world has reasserted itself and despite my best efforts, a job found me. Expect posts to slow down a bit, as for the next little while I practice my hobby vicariously by reading your posts instead of creating my own. Keep that great material flowing.
As if that isn’t enough, this arrived on my door step:
Like many wargamers, I am also a role player, and I enjoy Call of Cthulhu very much.
So many choices.
D.
How freakin’ cool!
About a month ago I made a post of stuff I like with links to two things.
Well, the issue two of The Golden D6 has landed. It is so cool it even has an interview with Andy Chambers. Get on board.
And, the comic I mentioned, Old England Grown New, well Warlord Games reckon it is pretty cool too. They’re right, of course, it is a ripper.
cheers.
D.
I found this comic being published via blog. I know nothing about Olde England Grown New, except it is a tale of danger and derring do set in the English Civil War. The first episode can be found grouped together here and is worth the read.
Something else that not too far away is edition two of The Golden D6 I’m looking forward to this being published, it looks like a ripper. Come on Adam, just because you have a day job, a family, …
Cheers,
D.
It can come from anywhere. Movies, blogs, magazines. I get a lot of inspiration from books, both novels and non-fiction.
This is a shot of my recent reading pile. Well, mostly. I have excised the novels that I read from my daughters’ VCE reading lists (in solidarity) and some library books since returned. What is left has a bunch of ideas.
The Antony Beevor books on Berlin and the extract from his Stalingrad work (I have read the full one) make me dream of mid-war Russians and Germans, likely in 15mm to get in plenty of tanks. The Berlin book inspires a late war German list for Bolt Action: hitlerjugend with panzerfaust, volkssturm with bewildered looks and cynical vets with plenty of machine guns.
Isaac’s Army is the story of Jewish resistance (in the camps and out) in Poland. A grim tale that coincided with (yet another) Black Tree Design sale and has led to a platoon of undercoated partisans waiting for some paint. Not standard battles, although I know they have a list, but I think has a lot of possibility for smaller, dedicated scenarios.
I have been working on a Commonwealth Tobruk army in 15mm for a long time. The Kings African Rifle memoir has left me with a vision that if I ever do a desert army in 28mm it will be pith helmets, fezzes, white officers, black troops and the Ethiopian campaign in the early war. The book itself is an entertaining read, replete with the racism one might expect from the time.
The last book I want to mention here is Keep Off the Skyline. I expect there are better books on the Korean conflict, but this one made me wonder why this war doesn’t turn up more often on the table. Late WWII Russian tanks against up-gunned Shermans and Pershings, campaigning up and down the peninsula (including trench warfare) and early uses of helicopters. Even some Sherman on Sherman action via lend lease passed on. All without the asymmetric challenges of Vietnam as the Chinese, DPKR and UN/ROK forces were largely conventional, albeit with a large range in training, morale and equipment. Something else to look into.
Too many ideas. And I’ve barely started on my Carthaginians.
What has inspired you recently?
There are some great hobby related sites about on the web. One of the things I love is that much of the best content can be found on people’s personal blogs and websites. We all have our favourites. Like many other bloggers, I keep links to some of my favourites on my home page (the list other gaming sites). Here is my current list, along with some comments. There are plenty of others – it is a pretty cool time to be a gamer.
Arkie Gamer tends to the historical, with beautiful minis and tables and often entertaining battle reports.
Azazel’s Bitz Box is a hobby machine, mostly fantasy and sci-fi
Dawn of the Lead is pretty eclectic, but always seems to have an interesting project on the go.
Flying Gorilla is not super active, but Costa a super talented sculpture, mostly for Eureka Miniatures and this blog gives a glimpse of his development process as well as some of his other projects.
Knights of Dice are a local (for me) company who are starting to do some pretty cool stuff with terrain. More active on FaceBook, but still worth keeping an eye on how ever you choose to do it.
(RubbishInRubbishOut is Viv’s YouTube channel, but I’m not sure what he’s doing with it at the moment.)
T’leroth’s easily distracted painting blog is by my friend Ian. Not so active recently – curse you work – but a fine painter.
Sprue Grey Toy Soldiers is the original Melbourne hobby blog. Claims to be the world’s slowest gamer, but I think a few of us could challenge him on for that title.
Adam from Sprue Grey is also the evil genius behind an online game magazine, The Golden D6. Issue one is out, and number two is expected soon. What I like about this magazine is Adam has done some of the hard work in finding the best of recent online bloggers and put them in a single place.
Cheers,
D.
With the arrival of the (so far) points-free Age of Sigmar, game balance is popping up in forums, pod-casts and facebook as well as at clubs and shops. It is the topic du jour.
The demon is blind-folded, so surely that is fair. And the guy has a feather as well as a chain-saw …
The focus of discussion is often on points and lists, which are the by far the most common way to bring balance, but I think these overlook several other ways that people can bring balance to games. Also, as we have all experienced, points don’t necessarily bring balance even if we allow that a consistent scheme is possible.
Points do have advantages. One is about setting expectations on the size of the game, which I think is at the heart of the AoS discussion. Another is that finessing an army list is enjoyed by a lot of people. It is almost a game in itself. Regular readers will know this is not how I approach armies, but I acknowledge many seem to get real enjoyment from this, and list-optimising has the advantage of being an aspect of the hobby that you can do by yourself between games. Players who like this aspect simply cannot do it with AoS. Nor can they can’t really do it with Black Powder, Hail Caesar, or Force on Force. There are plenty of systems where points optimising remains: Bolt Action, Flames of War, 40K, etc.
It is a diverse hobby, that is part of the attraction.
Army lists bring several dimensions to a game. Restrictions on building lists are most often used to bring a particular flavour to a game, mostly historical, e.g. restricting the number of units of cavalry for Romans or not giving Parthians access to armoured infantry. 40K does the same with variant lists that highlight various aspects of the background. That this can interact with points may cause angst but it definitely allows players to “forge da narrative”. List restriction that is integral to the rules is another way of achieving balance (and I guess is an almost hidden part of many points systems).
Missions can generate balance. Too many missions are mirror images. Not just meeting engagements for kill points, but missions where the mission objective is the same for both players. This can be fun, but by changing the mission, different challenges and armies can be tried out. All the factors of the game can be considered when designing a mission: list restrictions, terrain, deployment and victory conditions. I’m sure there are others.
Terrain is a factor in creating or upsetting balance. An extreme case is an amphibious assault, where the defender waits in bunkers and the attackers face a stretch of sand to the dubious safety of a sea wall. Tables do not need to be this extreme to create a challenge but a smaller, dug in defender facing a larger attacking force is more common than most games reflect.
Deployment. Who is on the board? Who has access to reserves? How safe are your flanks or rear area. Mix it up, and again it doesn’t have to be symmetric.
Objectives. This is the big one. How do you win? I like scenarios where there is a clear attacker and defender. This is something that has to be given up at most tournaments, and I’m OK with that. The trade-off is a guaranteed number of games with generally great opponents on often good-looking tables. All wins in my book. But I love it when there is a good story that goes with a game. Ancient enemies facing off in a battle that is plausibly part of a wider engagement. We don’t play for sheep stations but I like the illusion that we are.
All of this can be fitted into an ordinary game, but does require a bit of planning. I reckon it is well worth it.
In some ways a campaign is the natural habitat for these sort of ideas. But even without that sort of committment there is a lot of dimensions that can be explored.
Saint Celestine’s finest moment: purging the heretics with fire and sword
For pick-up games in stores or clubs the simplicity of: “What have you got? How many points? Cool – I’ll leave this unit out or make these dudes veteran, let’s go … ” is attractive and leads to games. This is a good thing. Of course, even without points this conversation can happen and I guess is for those playing AoS.
None of this will necessarily bring balance. One problem that points don’t solve is the dick-factor. I feel that underlying a lot of the passion about balance is not just a desire to have a reasonable chance (in some undefined sense) of winning but having a high probability of having a good game. Feeling competitive is part but not all of this story. Judging a winner is only part of balance. Wheaton’s Law and its derivatives is an attempt to solve this, but this is changing the topic.
Happy gaming.
D.
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