AbnormaliRoll - Fighter

The keep door swung shut with a heavy thud, just as several arrows buried themselves in the thick oak planks. Reezka stopped. gasping a little for breath, and absentmindely swung the small child down to the ground. Strange, she thought, that the child had no fear of her. Most humans were at the very least wary of her. Despite the orcish blood not being the main component of her heritage, it certainly showed stongly in her features. The sloping brow, large frame and blunt tusks were more than enough to make most humans approach her with caution.
She glanced over at her newly acquired companions. How did they feel about the half orc? So far no-one had seemed hostile or attempted to injure her, but there was definitely some wariness there. The Druid had stared openly when they had first come across each other. He hadn't said much, which suited Reezka fine, but he didn't seem to be familiar with orcs. Maybe they didn't have them where he came from.

AbnormaliRoll - Druid

As the door of the keep slammed shut behind them, Machi Tako paused and rested his hands on his knees and took a deep breathe. He was not having a good day he decided. It had started well. He had travelling companions. That was good. They seemed able to fight, that was also good. Still, he was slightly worried. The northlanders were so different. They way they seemed to act and think was alien. He had grown up in a small village by the sea. He had dug the dust and fished with his father before his wanderlust had driven him to the mountains in the furthest south. He felt he understood the silver haired woman, Asla, best. She followed a goddess of the sea and nature. She liked the sea as he did. That was good. He could sense her nervousness, her feeling of being an outsider. That meant nothing to him; to be a druid was to be an outsider. She would learn in time to rejoice in the power such freedom gave. Outsiders didn’t have to dig the dust after all.

AbnormaliRoll - Cleric

Asla stared into the waves as the ship headed towards shore. She inhaled the salty air as she reflected about her new companion. She'd spent the last few days with a Druid from the distant South. Not one to make friends easily Asla still felt this Druid was different. Ever since her family had drowned and she'd discovered her powers the sailors had been nervous of her. They respected her, but held their distance.
While not warm, the Druid did not shudder at her presence and he seemed happy to discuss the world and the places he'd seen. So she'd agreed to join him on his travels. And while there she could spread the word of Umberlee.

AbnormaliRoll - Bunch of hordes

So as I briefly mentioned before the Abnormalifaux group have decided to take a stab at some RPG fun by running a D&D campaign.
I'm the poor soul who has to herd these fine examples of adventurers so I suppose it's also my job to inflict ... sorry inform you with what's happening as we go.

For those that want to know we're playing Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition and we're running through the Horde of the dragon queen adventure (with a few tweaks from me)

Hopefully the player will fill you in on the story as we go, from their view point as its their story. I'll try and stick to the more technical side of the adventure with my posts going forward.

Summer summer summertime showdown.

Once again my Sunday plan was to head down to Wayland for another in the showdown series of events. This time I was picking up fellow Abnormalifaux Francois. (Also as a treat my car didn't breakdown until the day after instead of the day before)

No drama getting there and a fairly reasonable start (for me anyway less for Francois who had to get the tube to the countryside before risking getting in my car)

Got to sunny Hockley in time to help set up the tables, this would normally be the time I'd grab a pre game tea but for some unforgivable reason Wayland didn't open the bar until 11 so no tea, which hurt my cold dark soul.

Usual chat, handshakes, and hugs (Malifaux players are huggers) we joined the queue and registered with the TO team. (Non English readers do you enjoy forming into an ordered queue to register at events or is that just us??)

AbnormaliRoll

First off let me apologise for the lack of content lately. As a group we've not been gaming as much as we used to due to a mix of real life, gaming burn out, and the hideous heat that I'm slightly concerned is going melt the paint off my models. (For those non UK readers who are thinking it's not that hot please remember our entire country is designed to survive on grey skies and hot tea).

So what have we been up to? Well as you asked so nicely I'm going to tell you (also because otherwise this post would be tragically short)

Gaming Down Under - Part 1

So after 6 big years in the UK, arguably the tabletop mecca of the world it was time to head back to Oz. Kids are still young, weather is better and the beer cold etc.

I also thought what better time to actually contribute to the blog again giving a bit of a run down of my adventures on the 'Otherside' ... see what I did there !!

Product Review: Leodis Games Malifaux Mat

Hello Everyone! I know, I know it's been ages. All of us here at the blog have had a bit of trouble finding the time to write lately, and sadly I'm not sure if it's gonna get better any time soon. I do want to do a review of how my year of Guildball has gone so far as I have played a LOT of fishermen since my last article. But as for today, we have our first (I think) product review on the blog. Our friends at Leodis Games were kind enough to send me a battlemat to review. As I know quite a few people have been picking them up lately hopefully this is useful for those of you who have not yet gotten ahold of one. So I decided to get a Malifaux mat as I already had an official Guildball mat and thought having a faux map with all the deployment lines would be very handy. So as for the product itself. I was worried the matt wouldn't lie flat after being in the tube as it is quite light (not as light as my cloth mat, but much lighter than the mousepad ones). The first time I used it I definitely had to weigh down the corners, but it stayed flat quite easily after the corners had been weighed down for a bit. 

I chose a grass background as I thought that would best go with my Malifaux bases. I really like the pattern and was quite impressed with how it looked.

That is some realistic looking grass....

 As seen here and in the above pictures the center lines (both diagonals and the standard centerline) are very clear at a distance and the 6" center circle is also fairly clear and incredibly handy. We actually played Search the Ruins in our game and it made it much easier to bluff not having to measure things from the center during the game (though I still failed to score for it... I hate that scheme :P ).  My biggest issue with the mat, however is that the deployment lines are very hard to see. I managed to find the standard and close deployment lines (although it was tricky) but even when I was looking closely I couldn't find the lines for Flank or Corner, which is a bummer. However, I think this is an issue with the grass mat specifically as if you look at the below picture you can see the lines are much clearer. I think a stronger line print is necessary for the grass matt or possibly doing the lines in white, which would be much clearer. I personally would rather have more obvious lines than very subtle ones, but could see that being an issue for some people so it may come down to personal preference.

 As mentioned above, see how much clearer all the lines are on the cobblestone mat. Would definitely suggest picking this one up rather than the grass one if you specifically are wanting the matt for the deployment lines.

 Here is how the mat looks with terrain from Bendy Boards (mostly) before we started our first game on it. Really looks good even with unpainted terrain.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but the grass on my bases works quite well on this mat which is excellent. Really like the pattern.

Here is my Rooster getting ready to put down a Claim marker near the centerline.

 Here you can see the center circle quite well.

And here is a photo of me giving up a bunch of points for Search the Ruins to my opponent :P Cost me the game...

Anyway, all in all I am very impressed with the quality of the matt and playing with the lines on it was really handy and saved a bunch of time. As previously mentioned the only downside was the clarity of some of the deployment lines, but this appears to be an issue specific to the black lines fading into some patterns rather than an overall issues (as the cobblestone picture proves). Thanks again to Leodis for sending me the matt and I plan on continuing to use it whenever I play Malifaux at home.

ITC: Abnormalifaux Rises!

I haven’t had much time to write lately, but I really wanted to cover ITC because it was an amazing event and has really reignited my interest in Malifaux (even if it felt like there was a NB support group there about how crap out waves 3 and 4 were… but I digress). Before I get into the actual games I would just like to thank Mike Marshall for running yet another amazing event. Mike has now run two of my three favourite events I’ve ever been to (Daffcon 2016 and ITC 2017). The third one was in Canada, though I’m sure Mike would’ve run it even better. Also thanks to all the judges and other volunteers who were great and looked like they were having a blast. I’m still unsure if we will get a team together for next year or not, but if not I definitely plan to volunteers as a helper/judge. Finally thanks to everyone at Element games. Wow, what a venue. So far the only other venue I’ve been to that compares is Firestorm in Cardiff. Also it was lovely that they noticed me eating a salad I bought elsewhere on the Saturday as I couldn’t eat the provided sandwiches (which I am totally okay with) and offered to get me a salad for the next lunch, which they did. So props on that, they really went over and beyond my expectations. Finally, having an on site bar is fantastic and the late hours were great too. Honestly one of my favourite parts of the weekend was drunkenly playing Dom Westerland and James Reeves in Guildball (borrowing James’ Masons team) and trying to explain to some of the Finnish team how the game worked. 3 Games of Malifaux (and several pints) during the day and still was up for some Werewolf (Paul Butler is always a werewolf…) and Guildball (and more pints) at night. What an awesome time. Other big highlight was just chatting with a bunch of new players. Was great seeing Elinore, Martin and the rest of their team again as I had met them at Nationals 2015 and had faced Martin in Daffcon Frostgrave event. Also was great chatting with the Americans who were just excellent blokes. Also props to Team Trump Card for winning the event and for embracing their role as the heels of Malifaux by dressing up in super American gear. Loved it. Anyway, enough gushing let’s get on to the actual games.

Arran (Metalhed), Francois, Pippa, Me, Brad (Mechanical Dove)

So I lied… before we get on to the games I want to talk about my team. Abnormalifaux brought a team! That’s right we were repping the blog. Though only 4 of the 5 of us have actually written for the blog, but still, we are a true team and I was really excited to see how we would do. Also nervous though as I think we had played a combined 4 games or fewer of malifaux in the previous 1-2 months (I’ve been playing a lot of Guildball and a few other guys have been as well or were just generally busy) and one team member Brad (Mechanical Dove) was forced to play a different faction and ended up using a Master he had never won a game with (hamelin) for the whole weekend. For simplicities sake Brad went fixed master Hamelin, Francois went fixed Nellie, Philippa went fixed Ironsides except one round where she dropped Raspy, so it was really only Arran and I that were swapping Masters, and both of us only ended up using 2 of the 3 we brought (Sorry Tara/Pandora).