Spring has Sprung!

So as you probably read in a previous post by Dr Walnut, we recently went to the latest Showdown event at Wayland Games. If you have a chance to come along to one of these then it's well worth the trip. They're usually well attended (I believe we had 22 at this event which is about mid-range, there have been more attendees at various Showdown events) and they are run under the very capable guidance of Mr Mike "It's all about Me" Marshall. (All Glory To Lord Marshall pleasedonthurtme)

We had a full car load setting off to Wayland Games - the biggest Gremlin around Ben Harris had organised two of the Northampton regulars, Craig and Karl to come along. Plus we had been graciously blessed by having THE Joel Henry in the car with us. I feel we were all made better just by having him in the car. Actually for two of us that proved to be the case. But I'm getting ahead of myself here....

The car ride was a lot of fun, if slightly cramped in the back seat with me, Craig and Karl. There's always a lot of giggling when we're going to an event together, which I'm not entirely sure creates the best driving conditions for Ben but he hasn't crashed the car yet!

Craig's milkshake brings all the boys to the car and they're like...."Actually I'm not comfortable with this...."

We arrived at Wayland and went through the usual process of registering, saying hi to everyone and (for me) dispensing cookies to anyone who wanted them. Then it was onto the (somewhat) serious business of announcing the first round draw. And you know something is about to happen when Mike does the random draw and starts giggling. It's NEVER a good sign. The last time it happened I ended up in a Round 1 game against Benjamin Crowe with his Leve crew. It wasn't pretty. Thankfully this time it wasn't me on the end of an "amusing" match up - it was poor Mr Harris getting drawn against THE Joel Henry.

As for me I'd been handed a draw against another member of our travelling circus - Karl. We'd played once before at Wayland which had ended in a pretty definitive win for his filthy Neverborn against my Gremlins. This game would be different as Karl had switched factions to Ressers for this event. He'd chosen McMourning for this game, whereas I'd decided that the scheme pool for Round 1 was pretty well suited to Ophelia. Our strategy was Headhunter and I decided to take Hunting Party and Leave Your Mark, figuring that if I was killing things for Headhunter anyway, I might as well try and score some additional points from it.

The game was very close the whole way - we both scored points from Headhunter and I managed to score some VPs from both my Schemes so the scores all the way through were very even. Once again the Rooster Riders proved tough to pin down and were capable of grabbing head markers and dropping scheme markers for Leave Your Mark. It was a really fun game but I was pleased to come out of it with an 8-7 win at the end of it. So Karl and I are now 1-1 in our games - looking forward to another one sometime!

A Showdown in Spring

I thought I give a quick run down of my recent trip down Wayland Games for the most recent of the Showdown series of Malifaux tournaments

So on a sunny Sunday morning I jumped into the car and headed down to Hockley. I didn't get lost, I didn't get pulled over an no vital parts of the car dropped off so I called it a success.
Quick spot of breakfast first at the local cafe in the company of some of the friendly chaps from Kent. I would say I held court and filled the cafe with witty banter, but no I sat nodded along and tried not to spill food down myself... A partial success, bean juice has a life of its own.

So into the hallowed halls of Wayland gaming centre and kick off by saying hello to everyone (it's all very British, lots of handshakes and how are you's) this was followed by a queue (we've practiced this we all knew the drill no drama here.)
Registration done, I declared ressers and got my wyrd poker chip thing (we all want them but no one knows what they are) and a friendly quip from the TO, none other than one half of the Legendary steampunk detectives Mr Mike Marshall himself.

Other stuff happened I wasn't really paying attention, I'd gone to get tea. Round one draw and I get the King of the South - Jamming Ben Crowe.
Headhunter with Molly vs Collodi. We all knew where this was heading so no presume for game 1 made it a really relaxed fun game. Molly threw punk zombies at people. Collodi basically did the playground classic of "stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself" the game finished 9-2 to... Drum roll ... Mr Crowe.

The Bayou's Most Wanted - Rooster Riders

Pretty much the first thing I did when getting my copy of Crossroads was to head straight to the Gremlin section to see what new and broken toys we were going to get to play with. And the ones that made me scratch my head the most were the Rooster Riders. Simply from a thematic point of view they just didn't seem to fit. I mean roosters? In the Bayou? Wouldn't the gators just eat them?! Then I read what they could do.... In theme? Who gives a damn when they can do THAT? So let's take a closer look at these guys and see if Eless get through a whole blog post without making a joke about big cocks.....DAMMIT.

Rooster Riders are 6 SS minions and hilariously they have no Rare limitations which has led to some incredibly bonkers theoryfaux lists. They're also Wp4 which means that not only can all the Gremlin Masters make use of them but so can Zoraida in her Nerverborn guise. But on a brief glance at their statline, you could be forgiven for thinking they were a bit weak. With a Df of 5 and only 6 wounds they seem like a stiff breeze would blow them over, particularly when you take into account they have no armour, no Hard to Kill/Hard to Wound and no way to heal themselves. So they seem like they'd be quite easy to knock wounds off. And they are. But you might not be glad you did......

Daffcon

I've been planning on writing a short blurb on Daffcon since I attended but have been very busy lately, so I apologize for the delay. For those who do not know, Daffcon was a convention at Firestorm in Cardiff that was focused around small games (defined as game companies from Wyrd and smaller basically). It is the brain child of Mike Marshall and follows his philosophy apparent to those of us who are avid listeners to Fools Daily. This was the first year for the convention but Daffcon II has already been confirmed for Aug 2017.

I had an absolute nightmare of a Thursday and the train ended up being delayed for almost 2 hours due to a train failure ahead of us so we were stuck sitting on it in a station for ages. Didn't end up getting to our Air B&B location until after midnight.. So not a great start. Was worried about getting up early the next day, but ended up being alright. And we were only about a 15 min walk from Firestorm, so that was great. Warning: There are going to be a lot of photos in this article. I took a lot during the weekend, and it was three days of solid gaming.

Day One:
Started the day off with breakfast at the really nice cafe near the gaming venue, too bad it wasn't open on weekends, as I would've liked to go back. I had two events for this day, OGAM (which I had never played) and Frostgrave (I had played one game). I was also hoping to play some demos if there was time, but this was my busiest day of the weekend so Saturday seemed more likely for demoes.

OGAM:

This picture was taken near the end of the game when our gods faced off for the first (but not last) time.

There were only three of us signed up for the event, so Spooner begrudgingly stepped up to play as well as run the event. Other than him, none of us had played the game before. After seeing eachother at many malifaux events over the last couple years and almost ending up facing each other in the UK Masters Final (sadly blu tack took both of us down) I finally got to face Connor Barker in a game to prove once and for all who spells the name correctly! Sadly I forgot the Cerberus model I was using as my Lion God back at the hotel. Luckily Connor had his The Sow proxy. So now I was all in on worshipping the pig god. I believe Connor was using Pan as his Greek God. Had an absolutely awesome game, was absolutely hilarious as my heroes got cut down immediately but the pig god stormed back to singlehandedly win the game! All hail the pig god!  Connor was great fun to play against and OGAM was as fun (or more) as I had hoped.

His god and a unit of fanatics that did a lot of praying

Minor progress on some Victorian buildings

Some of you may have noticed that on my buildings I had left the doorways blank and I had included some wooden doors in the frames. I have no intention of making new doors each time. I was planning on waiting for some other bits before moulding them. But the I found some cheap small rings for jewellery that will be my door handles and I went ahead with the mould.

As a reminder here are the doors.

Givers and takers

Time for a new rant by Dr Walnut, (there really is no limit to my ranting)


Once again this is a post more aimed at the world of gaming than gaming it's self. (no all these rants have nothing to do with my complete lack of tactical knowledge shush you.)

I often talk about the community we have in Malifaux, and I for the most part am proud to be part of a scene where so many people put so much into building, maintaining and improving this community for the rest of us.

The clubs and stores making space for us and provide us with somewhere to play. They could of stuck with the old tried and tested games that fill table around the country but they to the chance.

The TOs who one and all run amazing events, from once a year to once a month (or more) these people put a lot of time and effort in making sure the rest of us can have a good time. And even if you run an event where ninety percent of things go wrong that's still one hundred percent better than no event at all.

The rankings are a prime example of the work that goes into this community. In the few years I've been playing the amount of work, and man hours and passion that have gone into the rankings from everyone involved has been amazing.

The blogs (very important),fan pages, the podcasts and videos that people produce and put out to help, inform and amuse people is a joy. Think about the amount of time spent by people doing these just for the joy of the game.

You also have the biggest resource we have as a community, the players. Every player that makes a point of saying hello to the new faces and the old ones too, the people who offer advice, the people who shake your hand after a game and the people who challenge you to be better.

Everything listed above is an example of someone giving to the community, people tipping the scale towards being good and moving forward.

But...

For all the people who give to a community there will also be those few who only take, people pushing the scales from good to shit.

I'm talking about the people who will shout down anything new or different, just because you like something how it is or was doesn't mean it what's right.

The people who show up to events just looking for what they can get out of it, they give no thought to helping spread the word and push the tickets. They won't lift a finger to help set up or pack up. Complain about the the slightest mistake in running the event. They show up late and moan if you don't finish on time.

All the people who go out of their way to criticise and complain about media they are getting for free. "this blog disagreed with me its shit" "this fan page doesn't have my exact type of thing I like its shit" "that podcast talked about something not relevant to me its shit" "that video played a rule differently to me they're shit" All of that I know better, well actually nonsense.

And the players that leave a sour note in their wake. The players who snub the new people trying to pretend to be cool, and mock the old ones because they think they can. The players who dish out opinions or judgements without looking past themselves. The players who stamp their feet and blame the world for every wrong turn. The players who drive you to be like them or to walk away.

These people are takers, they feed off of communities like leeches and smile while they do it.

There will always be an uneasy balance between givers and takers, like and ugly ecosystem and a health community will always push the balance the right way.

The point is if you are in a situation where you need to wonder "am I being a twat?" just think which way am I tipping the scale.

Barrels. barrels and other casting

Greetings all

So in my last I showed you some of the barrels that I had been making. I managed to get some moulding done since then. Unfortunately, the rubber I used was a little on the stiff side. This makes getting the barrels out a little difficult and they are prone to chipping, especially at the top. Oh well, they will just have to be worn and rusted barrels.

On to the pictures. I have a fair bit to show you and plenty of lessons (read as mistakes) to learn from.

SO here was the first cast I pulled from the mould. This was a rush job to see if it pulled the detail and to see if I could get the barrels out without breaking them - I was worried about the stiffness of the mould.

Success...sort of. The tops are chipped a bit, and there are loads of air bubbles from the cast (not the mould though).