Next Gen Party

So yesterday I took my life in my hands and run a D&D session for a pair of nine year olds, and surprisingly it went well.

I have a bit of experience DMing and I also have some experience keeping my daughter entertained (it's more art than science) so in theory I had the skill set to do this. I practice I had no idea how it would go. Both kids seemed keen to give it a try, my Sprog knows I play and often watches Critical Role with me (which did mean she was expecting Mercer level DM skills) Friend of Sprog knows a bit less about D&D but apparently has seen it on Big Bang Theory, so not completely unprepared.

Haaaave you met Spire?

So it’s been a while, how’ve you been? Me? Oh same old same old...

Ok awkward small talk out of the way. I thought as I’ve been randomly prattling on about it to anyone who’ll listen, I’d dig up the old blog and put all my ramblings about a game called Spire in one place.

To start let’s run through what Spire is: Spire is a tabletop role playing game using D10s. If you’ve ever seen nerds playing dungeons and dragons then this is a similar concept but with different nerds rolling different dice.

The actual mechanics of it I’ll get to later, before that I’ll share the best bit the world.

Spire is a city in a tower in a dark fantasy world. Imagine if you took London and instead of having all the different boroughs next to each other you stacked them up one atop the other and wrapped it all ancient angry walls.

Wolf in the hall

So this year I thought I post a quick review of Salute, but as I've done this before I thought I'd let someone a bit more excited about it share her thoughts.

My eight year old daughter and first time blogger Wolf (not her real name I'm not that cool/cruel of a parent)

Harlow is it me your looking for.

It’s been awhile but it’s time for a tournament report! (Waits patiently while you all recover from the shock)

It’s very odd as this isn’t Malifaux as my usual tournament write up, nor is it in one of my usual tournament venues. This does mean I can’t just copy and past the usual report and change the name of the event.

It’s was time for my first Guild Ball event! About a month before I had managed to grab the last ticket for the very popular Harlow Homerun 3, this may have been a bit over eager on my part as to that point I’d played two games of season three and had one model painted of the Goldsmiths. But always up for a challenge (that’s a lie I’m never up for a challenge I’d prefer a nap to be honest) I grabbed a ticket, asked loads of questions, watched some YouTube videos, and painted late into the night to prepare myself for the big day.

Goldsmiths are gold!

Okay in place of actually learning to play the game my time has been taken up with painting my "Goldsmith" team for the fast approaching Guild ball tournament Harlow Homerun III.

I'm almost at my tournament ten, which might have been chosen more for what I wanted to paint rather than any idea of tactical sense.

I've decided to throw up a few picture of the team so far. Partly because is quick and easy content and also because people seems interested in the progress.

First up was Anvil, I enjoyed painting him as there are lots of nice big clear details and room for another attempt at tattoo which one day I will get the hang of.

Bust out the rage...

I realised in all the excitement of doing nothing in particular that I never got around to writing up a post about the Rage bust I had the pleasure of painting.

This very cool bust was a gift from my D&D group (I say gift, they say bribe to not drop a dozen angry dragons on them). He's an offical Guild Ball bust produced by BrokenToad who I'm a huge fan of. The bust did take a bit of work to prep, there was a few tabs that needed removing, mould lines and flash to clean but nothing too bad.

Due to the terrible weather i then had to wait patiently (not my strong point) to get the angry fella primed. I kept the hand separate so that I could still get to the areas behind easily.

Guildball re match

Okay so somehow I appear to be back playing Guildball, back in season one I gave it a go with high hopes and good intentions but it never really clicked. All the games I had were fun but also forgettable. I always felt a bit like a spectator to the match instead of a player.

Swing back to now and due to my break up with Malifaux I’ve decided to give it another chance, already season three feels like a better game (based on my two muddled games so far) I’ve jumped in with a new team as then I can partly blame my previous failures on Union instead of myself.

I’ve decided to go with Blacksmiths, not because of their clever play style or anything quite so rational. Instead it was because I’d been practicing my NNM and was looking for something to use it
on. I decided to go with a different look than I’d seen and paint them up in gold effectively making them “Goldsmiths” (... honestly that thought process is the whole reason I’m going back to Guildball, and knowing my luck Steamforged will release a Goldsmith Guild next voiding my genius)

Now I haven’t played enough to offer any sort of tactical analysis of the Goldsmiths so instead my next few post will be mainly about painting the team and also preparing for my first Guildball tournament... oh yeah that’s my other genius plan, to “motivate” me to actually play I’ve signed up to a tournament. (In for a penny, in for a crushing defeat. Like the old saying goes).

D&D: the journey begins - a starting guide to D&D pt1

I've been super quiet about Malifaux recently. For various reasons getting a load of models to central London with a load of equipment is just too time consuming. When I started Malifaux it was an easy to access skirmish game. You could have a couple of crew boxes, a few supplemental boxes, cards, tape measure and maybe a few tokens.
Now though the game has ballooned in a huge range and I can't really keep up in a way that is enjoyable. I'll still do some painting and hopefully some casual play.
Luckily the group decided to do some D&D. I was a bit curious and so I decided to give it a try. I was almost instantly hooked. Here was a game without the limitations of the table top. A game that rewarded the effort of making a background, being imaginative and focused on a social gathering.
This is now my game of choice. I'd like to share my journey with you. In this series, I'll cover how to get started, a guide to getting a character to the table, the pros and cons of optimisation, why you might want to kick someone out of a group and a better way to handle it, the various accessories, podcast reviews and YouTube including the mighty Critical Role.
Let's get a couple of questions out of the way before we get started on getting started.

What is Dungeons and Dragons?

Beware the Wrath of Freya!

<tap tap> Is this thing on? Oh....errr hi! So it's been a while huh? How's the family?

One thing I've always been very much in favour of in the hobby is the promotion of awesome women in the hobby as a whole, whether they be players, painters, sculptors or all of the above and more I've not thought of. It's why I've been demoing Malifaux at Salute for the last 2 years, trying to get more women engaged and interested in the game and the hobby as a whole.

This year however has seen a bit of a switch - as the stand where I usually demo has decided to run demos of the new game coming out from Wyrd called The Other Side. The models look cool but the cost and the size of the game has precluded me from backing it, which isn't exactly ideal for me trying to sell it to people. So I am (hopefully!) going to be running demos/helping out for the lovely Annie of Bad Squiddo Games. And because Annie is very very awesome, she has also sent me a sneak preview model from her Freya's Wrath Kickstarter.

Not dead yet

Well this is a bit embarrassing isn’t it, our little twice weekly blog has crawled to a bit of a halt, to the point where twice monthly would be a surprise and twice yearly would be an improvement.

I’ll hold my hands up on this one as I’ve not posted in ages due to a complete lack of shit being given about gaming in general. This has a filter down effect on the rest of the group. Not in the way that I’m any sort of boss or leader to this mob, think of me as more like a grumpy stepdad who doesn't care if the kids do their homework.

So I figure I’ll have to step up and write something so I can at least pretend to be a good example. The problem is I’m not really doing much gaming to ramble about, and I’m not talking to enough idiots to warrant a rant. That leaves me with the option to write about the absence of gaming that I’m experiencing.