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).

Busted!

A while ago I wrote a post about my attempt at painting a bust. It was something I'd wanted to try for a while and as it turned out something that I really enjoyed too.

With my first busts finished I now I'm keen to carry on and do more, (unfortunately this is at the expense of the rest of my painting queue)

While I'm pleased with these busts they did help me pick out a few (many) gap in my skills. As with most things the key to improvement is research and practice.

The research I could do, the only benefit of going to work is time and access to trawl the web for tutorials, videos, diagrams, and inspiration. This is also a time where social media is brilliant. Various painting groups on facebook plus following other painters on twitter and instagram is a gold mine of information. I've also found figure painter magazine to be really good for all things painting.

Practice was looking to me a bit more difficult, unlike painting models for gaming where I seem to have a never ending supply, bust feel like a bit more of a luxury purchase. Thankfully Salute is a thing that exists. While at the show along side my many other (much needed) model purchases I treated myself to a selection of busts.


Firstly there was the Wonderland set from Broken Toad which my daughter insisted I buy. ( she's also insisting that she gets to paint one of them but I'm skimming over that).

These other than just being gorgeous sculpts are also aimed at painters looking to make the jump from models to bust. The scale is big enough to try out new skills without completely rethinking how you paint. Which was an issue I found with the flower girl bust.

I'm hoping to really push myself on this set, which while its a great goal does restrict the practice element slightly. So my final purchase at Salute was ideal, spotted completely by chance on a stall that sold random boardgame bits and bobs. (If anyone remembers the name please let me know). Here I found a box of loose bust which looked like pieces from a game. They were ideal, bold simple sculpts with enough character to really have fun with. And at £1 each (If I had had any cash left I would have got the whole box for that price).

So now I have a selection of busts to try techniques and ideas on. The first of which I grabbed out of the pile of shame the other night and started on.

This happy fella was the first out the bag, And the things to try were bolder colours, dappling to blend skintones and also better shading of hair.

I decided to go a bit random with the colours, as I usually have a predecided scheme for gaming minis this would make a nice change.

I started off with the skin, I've wanted to try something greenskin for a while so that seemed like a good excuse. I painted all the shadows in first with a purple, most of it ended up covered but it helped with the tone. I then built up from dark to light green in layers which I then tried to blend together by building up multiple areas of spots in various shades all overlapping. I also added in spots of browns and yellow to help.

I then moved onto the hair using something closer to NMM gold than the highlighting I'd do on a 32mm models hair. I think the idea was right but seeing it finished I probably should have increased the contrast between the light and dark areas (similar issue I have with NMM)

The glasses where next and it was another excuse to try something I'd been wanting to for a while. Reflective surface. I think the term is Sky Earth Non Metallic Metal or SENMM (or shiny).
This took quite a light touch as too heavy or bold on the colours and it would look closer to just mutlicoloured glasses not a reflection. I think it worked but it'll definatly take a few more tries before I'm happy with the theory of it.

The clothes were a bit simpler, bold colours and attempt some texture. The shirts is supposed to be slightly silky which will need a rethink to get right (but the colour is great) The tie has a more woven texture used by criss crossing lines along the length.

I'm rather pleased with the results and it has given me some new things to go away and read up on before I start my next project.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully there won't be such a wait before the next post.

Spring Showdown (insert clever pun here)

It was time for the second showdown of 2017, Spring Showdown. You know it's spring because the clouds are a slightly brighter shade of grey and there's a younger looking range of road kill lining the countryside.

Truth be told I wasn't exactly in a social mood on the Sunday morning and it did cross my mind to drive straight past Hockley, head down to Southend and spend the day eating fish and chips on the "beach". But decided against it and parked up in the usual spot at Wayland instead.

The traditional pre event routine of handshakes, hugs, and insults took place while we were setting up and registering. There was a great turnout for the event, the showdown series has consistently grown in popularity and there was a good mix of players of different abilities.

Once registered and a quick intro from TO Mike "The Bunny" Marshall we were off. Thanks to bag o' tools we could just check our phones to see what tables we were at which really speeds things up.

Game one

I faced fellow Dark Sphere local Tim, who was running Molly versus my Raspi. The strat was collect the bounty.
Now this will be a fairly short run down as I didn't actually do anything much all game. I should have known better having played Molly for so long but I got punk zombied to bits by turn three after that it was just a case of him mopping up. The game finished with me having zero models left on the table and a massive 10-1 for Tim. It was a fun game but not a great start to the day.

Next up was lunch and the painting competition. Lunch was the Wayland usual of meat in bread with drink and snacks. The painting entries put out were amazing and I have to say that in the few years I've been playing Malifaux the level of painting has consistently improved. Where as before you had one or two stand out crews now there's always plenty of real contenders.

Game two

This round I faced the brute squad, Mr Harris. It was a Arc off with me sticking to Raspi and Ben taking Colette. As we attempted to fight over squatters rights.

The game was slightly less of a pummelling than game one, Raspi was holding back from killing too much as frame for murder was in the pool. So without the worry of friendly blast damage we ended up in a bit of a melee fest in the middle of the board while various ice dancers ran around doing stuff.

Ben consistently scored his VP while I lucked into a few points here and there. Closest I got to a plan coming off was when Colette to a pot shot at the Emissary, killing it and scoring me frame for murder. Finished up 9-5 to Ben, which is about 5 more points than I scored last time I played him.

Going into the last round I was on for the spoon, which although familiar territory for me it was something I'd rather avoid. So a large tea and a breath of fresh air and it was onto game three

Game three

Time for the second arcanist off of the day (so many Arc players now). This time it was versus a newer player James who was running Ironsides. I was sticking to Raspi again. The Strat was Stake a Claim.

The game started as a bit of a beat down as we all rushed into the centre of the table, Raspi took out Willie and put a fair chunk of hurt on the captain. Then the Captain replied by taking Lola (Cassi) down to two wounds. Then Snowstorm ate what was left of the Cap.

After than I did the smartest thing, I run and hid. The rest of the game became all about dropping markers with the odd fight between scheme runners. 

The game ended 10-6 to me. Meaning no spoon '17 is still a thing.

Well done to all the people who won (including fellow High Fauxdelity host Ritch, who got best Resser) As always I don't remember these things so check the rankings or just guess.

I managed to win a crew box in the raffle (second event in a row) which will go in to my ever growing pile of shame.

Big thanks to Mike for running things and Wayland for hosting. Thanks again to all of my opponents for the fun games. Oh and thanks to Eless for the cookie.

There are still tickets available for the next two Showdowns of this year, and the the Autumn one Falldown has just been bumped up to a two dayer so and ideal time to practice for nationals.

Thanks for reading.