Invaluable Warhammer tools; Battlescribe Roster builder

One of the most useful tools that I would recommend to fellow players of Wargames is Battlescribe. This is a mobile and PC based list builder that I really would struggle to live without, and heartily recommend to all (not an Ad you’ll be surprised to learn! Just really like it).

So Battlescribe is a third party app that has been around for a couple of years, and is incredibly useful to keep your lists and rules in a nearby format.

Essentially, it uses data catalogues uploaded by the gaming community to allow regular joes to build viable gaming lists.

I touched Infinity and I liked it! PT 1: First Miniature

Operation Icestorm appears to be gaining a significant amount of momentum across independent stores in the UK, as this is the first pop-up gaming boxed set that Corvus Belli have put together that's really breached the public eye and its a cracker. I've got it and I can already tell you its miniatures are incredible. The game I've yet to have time to play with a new baby. Icestorm.

Warhammer and babies...

Since I've found out I'm going to be a father I've acknowledged that my painting, modelling and even storage habits will have to change. With that in mind, keen not to lose the focus that I've put into the last year and a half of gaming I've began to make stockpiles.

Seeing the handy comments on a Bell of Lost Souls article (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/06/happy-fathers-day-editorial-gaming-as.html) surrounding having a new baby take over your life completely, I decided to start making some sacrifices early, so as not to put too much strain on the relationship with the hot wife, but also my friends.

So see below the 10 changes that I've made to help me and my gaming addiction.

Being a cliché, and 'Find the Cyclops'

Well I have been busy.

So apart from this Renegade Hellhammer beastie (more on him later) in the last month, I've got my house sold and looked at 18 separate houses to then buy afterwards (only 2 had a dedicated study, but hey ho) I've enjoyed a lovely holiday with friends, was best man at an awesome German wedding for my good man Den, had a birthday, and finally had an enormous game of Apocalypse, all with a pregnant wife and little spare time at all.

So I apologise for the delay, Den let me know the delay was unacceptable. Sorry Den.

Killteam

I’m going to say three things.
- No I’m not looking forwards to 7th Edition
- I didn’t know my stomach lining would look like that
- Moving house as a couple does not mean that you can prioritise a game room over an extra bedroom!

Image courtesy of Aerion The Faithful-DeviantArt

Glean for that what you will. On to gaming. Killteam! 

Gaunt the Chaos Commissar and Platoon Number 1 finished

Just had to share this first, my father went to visit the Royal Armouries Collection at the Tower of London and took a few snaps of a particularly epic Warhammer (subject-matter-tie-in wahey!) with a six shot revolver built in to the hammer face. I think it looks suitably esoteric enough to suit an Inquisitor as his weapon of choice, cheers Dad!

So smash someone in the face and then blow their head off? Or answer that age-old question 'Why did you bring a mace to a gun fight?'

Sons of Sek; Paint schemes and Berocca paintbrush holders

So, time to attempt some colour.

First things first, basic palette.

Again, teasing data from the books shows that the SOS have yellow ochre uniform, with glossy black body armour, which rose over their mouths into a hand cupping into a gorget.

For some reason though, a paragraph lodged in my memory that indicated that the SOS wore 'acid yellow' uniforms, and whose belts, bindings, and accoutrements was formed from the flayed skin of their enemies. However, without being able to find this in the fiction, I went for the option which I could guarantee I could find.

Basic Palette
So the basic palette was nice and simple;

Something happened...

A story, a story!

So this happened

Yes. Yes. YES! My family members and my wife (yes!) know that my excited face is pretty much the same as my 'its cold' face. So I was happy to discover that the guys at the The Bolthole had decided to publish another anthology after their 1st, a horror anthology was a success. 
Their newest anthology revolved around time travel and this was the editorial quote that I've just sent post-release.

'I'd like to think that writing for the Marching Time anthology changed my rather jaded opinion of time travel entirely.

I was very much of the fixed mindset that sees time travel as either A) A lazy plot device B) An easy-out for script writers C) An over saturated media format. When I see 'time travel' as a movie sub-genre it makes me wince, wishing for someone to look slightly outside of the opportunity simply to get a re-use from that damned period drama set.
Give me linearity and formula any day. Characters rather than character.

And yet, when viewing our editor He2etic's carefully worded recruitment poster that emphatically stated; "we want war stories" I felt the pocket of bile that I'd reserved for said topic dissolve into my intestine with nary a pop nor poke. Perhaps this was how to dissolve my disaffection. Perhaps now that time travel was a far less significant part of the story would I enjoy writing around it, rather than against it.
So I sucked up my own reservations and pitched a story. 

Thanks to the Editors everything went well, and now, my name is a fricking hyperlink!'

More on this tomorrow.

A lot happened, that's my excuse

So the last year in a whistle-stop tour

I got this

Forum forays and feedback

Hello headspace...

As the wedding looms I've been rather side-tracked with anything other than writing, my own life taking more precedence than my characters, thankfully. However in between some roundabout rambling I’ve managed to join the Black Library Bolthole forums and have attempted to join their *gulp* fan fiction collective and contribute in some way. Initially I realise that this was because I felt like joining a support forum for ‘People who submit to Black Library and then can’t quit.

Before all of this I should admit that I am a vehement loving stickler for canon, to the degree that I tutt like a schoolboys unforgiving mother when something breaches it. The Bolthole can be a real breaker of the canon in some regards, other times it can be very much the equal stickler as I am. Personally, canon adherence can force me to refuse to continue a story if it is so dangerously divergent from the norm. Lord of the Night by Simon Spurrier I had to halt when the Night Lord became slightly too emotional, early Ragnar books fell equally into this trap. The Inquisition War books I dodged too after the protagonist met Mr Emperor in his own chambers. It put me off.

No people...just no.

Hypocritical

Wow, the hypocrite in me really needs to relax.

I always follow the big BL types in their collective bloggage and I’d been waiting for a new shiny something from Mr Abnett for some time (Mostly because he’s yet to write something that I haven’t immensely enjoyed but mainly because 9/10ths of all his posts have a tied-in competition or prizes, free stuff!) and I’d noted that none had been posted for several months. In my fan boy eagerness I sighed and jumped to this wretched collective of thoughts and saw that I myself hadn’t contributed anything either since the 25^th May. Wow.