Opening the box set:)

So my first order of actual infinity miniatures arrived today! Can finally start removing the proxies from our games!
Opening the box we find that, joy of joys, the box is packed with the miniatures between two layers of foam. Both protecting the minis during transport, and making the box into a useful little carry case for the minis after they have been glued and painted! The multi part figures come in Individual baggies to make identifying everyone's arms easier, which is nice. Looking over the models the only damage seems to be to the SAS knife, which is fair enough looking at the size of the thing.

Most of the models were fairly clean, only the Wulver having a lot of flash and tags to be clipped off. Despite this, I wouldn't recommend Infinity minis to the younger gamers, these things are small! and incredibly fiddly. Despite this, it's nice to work with real scale 28mm models and these are lovely examples. Crisp details and lovely sculpts.



There's no way I couldn't not put them together. (Is that too many negatives? I can never tell) So, ignoring everything I'm supposed to be doing I grabbed some glue and a hobby knife.

Picture heavy time.



Highlander Grey


SAS


Wulver



Volunteers


Not bad huh?
I think I like the Highlander grey the least. it's the overly large gun, if I get the other one I may do an arm swop. Since I took this photo I've rotated the Wulver's left arm so his gun is almost touching the floor, looks much more natural, piccys when I start painting.
Starting to wish I'd picked up a few more now. But there's always next time!

A Beautiful game

And not about football either!
I saw a game of 40k the other day A tourney style mechanized (really badly painted) grey knights army was facing up against one of the best 'Nid armies I've ever seen. I mean, truly stunning. Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me, but if I remember I will update the post with a picture or two.
And knowing both players fairly well, I felt incredibly bad for the 'Nid player. He's one of those guys who doesn't have a lot of free time, so anytime he does manage to get a game in is a big deal, but he wants to play. He wants a good friendly game with a couple of beers and a good laugh.
Sadly the other guy is a dick, he's jumped from army to army, whatever he perceives as the newest, best army, so nothings ever painted, which is fine I guess. But he brags incessantly about his newest list, and then whines when he looses, I'm sure you all know the type. And up to a point it's fine, you expect it of the little kids because they don't know any better, they just want to win. But he's 35. And I've seen him throw models across the store when he looses. One of those players who will mock you for taking a weaker list over whatever the Internet says is "the best". Sadly the 'Nid player didn't know this going in.
Obviously he got annihilated. Swarm 'Nids aren't the most competitive army anyway, especially against a mechanized list, and doubly so against grey knights. I think it took three turn to table them, for no considerable loss to his opponent. Which is ok, it happens sometimes, but the gloating, ohh Gods above, I've never seen such poor sportsmanship. Ever. Constantly belittling the poor guy for having the nerve to take "poor" units over "better" ones. Praising his own list and clever use of tactics.
Words are failing me to describe how much of a dick this guy was being.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like tournament level games, I like that level of competitiveness. But at tournaments, or when I know the guy opposite me doesn't mind, and isn't a complete dick.
But even at tournaments, I enjoy the playing more than the outcome of the game. For me, and for a lot of guys I game with, (which is why I game with them) winning and loosing is irrelevant, it's all about playing a beautiful game.
And it's something that I think is missing from, specifically, a lot of GW stores and clubs. That it is always better to lose a good game, than to win a bad one.
It used to be called "the most important rule", that both players should be having fun. But it seems to have been dropped somewhere along the way. You see little kids now, and some not so little, for whom winning is everything, and who will throw massive tantrums if they lose. Not all, but enough.
It might just be that I'm getting older, that I didn't notice it as much when I was younger, and I hope that's true. But I can't quite shake the feeling that gaming is heading downhill.

In short, don't play to win, play for a beautiful game..

Random incoherent mutterings I'm afraid.

I know I've advertised this blog in a few places, but it's still mostly just for me. So if I want to waffle on incoherently I can :p
One of my friends recently lost a grandparent, thankfully for my continuing health, the chances of her reading this blog are incredibly small as she'd kill me if she knew I was mentioning her in a blog. Still, we ended up having a long conversation about the difference between being alone, and being lonely. Which brings us to the theme of this rather depressing entry.
It's not a new phenomenon, loads of people feel fine when they are alone, but can feel incredibly alone while surrounded by people.
I've spent most of my life being on my own, i usually prefer it, I like having my own space, my own life. Never been much of a social creature, although I make exceptions for decent gaming. And a few people I like. But recently, regardless of if I'm off on my own, or surrounded by people, I feel, profoundly lonely, and I have no idea why. Actually that's a blatant lie, I know exactly why, but I can't do a damn thing about it.
Circumstances conspire to give us exactly what we want, at the exact moment when we cannot, for whatever reason, reach out and grab it.


But it's strange, how you can live perfectly well without something, but miss it when it's gone.

Players!

I've always been a fan of D&d's alignment rules, especially when upheld by a good DM.
Basically, there are 9 possible states, Good, Neutral and Evil, each of which is split into 3 categories, Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic.

Lawful Good Neutral Good Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral Neutral Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil Neutral Evil Chaotic Evil

Basically, your characters actions in the game define your alignment. If you run around killing puppies for no reason, you'll swiftly become evil. Obviously.
There are certain limitations, Paladins can only be Lawful, Druids can only be Neutral. So if your alignment changes it can have consequences for your character.

sadly, it's a rare thing for gamers to uphold the alignment and beliefs of their character. For example, in a D&D campaign I'm playing in at the moment, we came across a little burial vault. The other players immediately rushed over to loot the poor incumbent. Of course, they looked to the cleric to check for anything magical in the room. I, being a Lawfull Evil Cleric,, refused. Yes I'm evil, but not only are we breaking laws raiding this tomb, but I'm a priest of Nerull, (God of death) so no, I'm not going to join in your looting of the restful dead. Now the other characters did nothing wrong, being mostly Chaotic Evil. But they seemed surprised that I'd turn down a share in the loot, (and it was damn good loot too) based on my characters beliefs. You see it a lot in games, players will nearly always do anything to accomplish their goals. Even if in performing the deed they become more evil than the bad guys they were sent to stop.

Now I'm not saying it happens all the time, of course not. I've seen some great roleplaying moments where players have made life MASSIVELY more difficult for themselves by staying true to their characters. But I've seen FAR more times where players make life far easier for themselves by being, well, Chaotic Evil

I've had great success in "prodding" players to stay true to their alignment by introducing "insanity points" (shamelessly stolen from FFGs RPG Dark Heresy) now, evil type characters aren't too fussed about a little evil influence, but a priest who is forced to sacrifice someone to stop some great evil would be taking some serious points for killing an innocent he is sworn to protect, even if in doing so he saved far more lives. If nothing else, it can be a nice plot line as he runs off on a penitent quest to cleanse himself.

Ok, moving on.
Why are players always so slow to respond to plot?
I mean I'm massively guilty of it too, when I'm not actively playing in a system, i can see all the plot hooks and hints and tips that are dropped in, but, as soon as I become a player, suddenly only the most blatant and least subtle hints seem to register. Bits of information, that would make perfect sense if I wasn't playing, become cryptic beyond belief. Things that should be obvious as soon as we heard them suddenly take most of a year and some very heavy prodding by the crew to become even vaguely solid ideas (I'm looking at you here Thanir, you know who you are). it's seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, wherever I go, people always make fun of the players inability to decipher plot.

I mention this, as I'm planning on starting a character in my local LARP SPEARHEAD, which runs daily liners about twice a month with two big weekend events a year. If you're looking at getting into LARPing and you live in or around Surrey, you should come check out an event.
Now, the new campaign started early this year, and I've been crewing since the beginning, so I've had fairly good access to the plot and what the players should know. I'm just hoping that filling out a character sheet doesn't cause my reasoning abilitities to dribble out of my ears :)

Infinity

I AM A TERRIBLE BLOGGER!!!!!!
Ok, so, it's been a while, I can live with that, it's not like anyone reads this
One of the guys at our local games club brought in a copy of the new infinity rules
Infinity the Game
I watched a bit and had a quick flick through the rules.
I went back and had another look.
Then went home, downloaded the rules pack and, after cleaning up the copious amounts of drool on the keyboard, promptly ordered a starter set.
I've been looking for a nice squad sized sci fi game for a while now. 40K doesn't cut it with only a few minis. Necromunda has never realy grabbed me. And looking at the rules for War Machine makes my head hurt, now I'm sure it's an amazing game, and I've heard it's brilliant once you get the hang of it. But the learning curve is second only to Dwarf Fortress, an amazing PC game I'll cover later, maybe.

Anyway, Infinity.
Now, I always try to avoid the "new game syndrome" that makes people go a bit funny after seeing a new rules set they like. so I always try and find things I don't like about a new game, before I start frothing.
OK, I don't like the scatter mechanic. The scatter dice is an amazing thing and should be used rather than rolling for a random direction. And you can still have that awkward moment where your amazing demo veteran throws his grenade 12" behind him.

Right. So, some things I like. I've been saying for years that the biggest problem GW made was using D6's in it's systems. The D20 means that there can be a real difference between units in the game. I also loved the system for throwing grenades over walls, go look it up. It's great. I love the turn sequence as well. It's an active/reactive system, where one player get to take his actions, and the other can make certain reactions. It helps prevent those horrible moveruncharge turns that units in 40K pull off with impunity.
Ok, no review would be complete without a few pictures. I couldn't possibly show off all the miniatures here, there's far too many, but I think one won't hurt


a little more anime than I'm used to, but I like them. A starter set goes for about €40 with shipping included. And a 300 point game is about €70-100 depending on the race and army composition.

Citadel Finecast

Ooooohhhh it's a good day for Hobbyists!
Today we saw the launch of Games Workshops replacement resin figures, finally doing away with the old metals. I will admit to being more enthusiastic than most for this particular release as I got the chance to have a look at some before the official release this morning, "yey!"
I'd hoped to pick up some minis that sadly have been pushed back to later, but I grabbed a couple of replacements for minis that I love, but hate playing with.

Offender number one, would be Sammeal on his bike, but I have to wait for that one.

Offender number two would be the tech marine! While I can't wait for his thunderfire toting cousin to be released I picked one up to have a hands on go myself.


Isn't he pretty? The resin is a joy to work with, what little flash there was was cleaned up easily with a knife, far easier than metal. The arms will probably be magnetized later to make transporting the little bugger easier, but they went on with a dab of glue, no issues at all. I'm sure your all used to sitting there with a heavy pice of metal swearing at it until it dries, well the guy opposite me stuck a Hive Tyrant together in about 10 mins, with no fuss, no hassle, no pinning! I did have a couple of minuscule air bubbles, though far less than I thought there would be, easily fixed with a dab of superglue. The detail on these kits is simply superb, so many of the old metal kits get a huge facelift, none more so than the servitors with the tech. Normally I'd have jammed these straight in a draw and ignored them, but the new ones are simply stunning.



I defy anyone to say there's more detail on the old metal kit. Especially the chest and hand detail. Now kits I'd never have used because of the weight of metal, like vanguard or harlequins, are now practically weightless, making gaming with them a reality, finally.

All in all I'm a very happy hobbyist. I even picked my DA up a new toy. There had to be a token Dark Angel model in the new release, and sure enough



The paint job is a little rushed, but the store had a painting competition finishing this afternoon, and once I'd bought him there was no chance I wasn't going to enter him. I won, but only because I spent a mere 2 hours painting him he will be finished off eventually. We spent a lot of time playing "catch" with him across the store, just because we could. A couple of "accidental" drops resulted in no damage whatsoever, not even a paint chip! Although the tech marines flamer fell off after a shoulder high drop.

All in all, I can say despite the pricing changes, (and not all models went up) They are WELL worth the expense. Beautiful to work with, easy to cut and repose and take paint extremely well. It's not often I froth about GW products but this one is well worth the frothing.

Mead glorious mead!

So today I'm curled up in the sun reading The Name Of The Wind Frankly, an amazing fantasy book that shows great promise as the first of the trilogy. And drinking mead, an unusual drink that seems to have fallen out of favour somewhat.

It's a pity, as decent mead has a beautiful sweet taste, much like an ice wine.
This batch I found from The Giddy Kipper, THE LARP event caterers, seriously the food is amazing. All served in character with mead or ale or scrumpy. Absolutely amazing.

Anyway, at the end of the weekend they were selling off the bottles of mead they had left, there weren't many, but I got first dibs for helping to set up and clear away. This particular brand is called drunken monk well worth trying if you like an in character tipple at your event, or if you just fancy trying something different. The fruit liqueurs are well worth trying, especially with the hot weather coming up, mixed with lemonade they make a fantastic cocktail.

Anyway, the book! Takes a rather interesting spin on a classic anti hero. Remembering glory, but now reduced to a powerless man hiding from his past. But with danger approaching, can he pull himself together again?

Not going to ruin any of the plot for those of you who haven't read it yet, but I highly recommend you do.

Random picture

So, I've finally worked out how to input photos into this thing. I love my iPad dearly, but people really need to work on certain apps.
I did have a topic in mind when I started trying to get a photo attached to this blog, but it was so long ago I'm damned if I can remember what it was. Waffling is bound to follow.

So random picture of me suspended a long way up a beautiful cliff somewhere on England's south coast. I fell asleep on the minibus on the way there and never found out where we were. If anyone recognizes the rock let me know, I'd love to go back.

Having a bit of a yellow moment in this picture, I'd found a nice big safe crack and was looking in horror at the huge overhang just above me.

Its a great hobby, but then I think it's massively important to scare yourself witless at least once a year. For those of you who prefer a tamer workout inside centers are becoming massively popular, and tend to run workshops for newbies, as well as having links to local outdoor climbing groups if you fancy something a little more adventurous occasionally. Regardless of how you do it, it's a great workout. You can be as social as you like, work as hard as you feel comfortable with, and you get a real thrill when you finally get to the top of a challenging route. A good center will constantly change the setup of the walls so there will always be new challenges to master. Beats the hell out of running on the same machine 3 days a week.

As with anything nowadays I think people are put off by the massive cost of buying the kit, and with good reason, a full rack for outdoor use can set you back a thousand pounds easily. Thankfully you can usually rent gear for just a few pounds a time nowadays, but if you find yourself going back often I'd strongly recommend getting at least a pair of decent climbing shoes.

One of the biggest issues people have with starting climbing is the long repeated excuse "I'm not strong enough". Rubbish! If you can walk around and stand upright, you can climb.

So go try it!

Airsofting goodness!

So today im going to shamelessly plug Protocol Seven.
An airsoft game run by some of my mates.

Set in 2016 the basic backstory is that at the 2012 Olymipcs a fundamental Christian group, the children of the end, hijacked and crashed a train into a station in London. Medical teams from all of the attending nations came together to help out. Unfortunately this symbol of international cooperation was marred by the violence that broke out a few days later. The Olymipcs were cancelled amid a spate of violent attacks in the Olymipic Village.

It wasn't until the clean up a couple of weeks later that the broken vials were found in the wreckage of the train. By then it was too late, the infection had spread across the globe.

Those infected gradually became more and more animalistic, Untill all that remained was a desire to eat. Not zombies in the traditional sense. They could reason, plot and communicate, enough to function in packs, hunting for living things to consume.

The survivors were rescued by the GT, the Guild of Transport, as they became known, and taken to the citadel, a walled refuge where the remaining population, roughly 8000 in total, hid.

Roll on 2016 and the inevitable fall of the Citadel. Taken by APC in panic to the semi ruined safe zone of Tuddinham, about 40 of the survivors emerge and begin exploring the settlement. A rough collection of prefabs surrounded by a minefield.

Enough backstory already! It's on the website if you want to go read it.

It was an amazing weekend. Arriving on site in the pitch black to find our supposedly safe new home overrun by infected. Incredibly short on ammo and basic supplies clearing the buildings room by room was a nail biting affair, and disposing of the bodies in the dark was not easy, or safe.

The games team are trying to make the plot as open as possible, so very few prewritten plot lines, as much player generated content as possible. it's interesting not waiting around to see what the next encounter is going to be. But actually just trying to survive while everyone else tries to stuff you. Various blog posts in the future will probably relate some of the story lines from my point of view.

It was an amazing first event, well worth a look if you fancy your chances against the infected hordes and the rest of the players.

Enough random geekyness!

Mild geeky overload there.
I'm still not exactly sure what I want to include in here. Random gaming/geeky blog posts on the interweb seem to be everywhere, and Im not sure how much of my life I want to post on here. Not that much of it is particularly interesting.

I plan on doing a few review type things. Namely pathfinder and the Warhammer 40K roleplaying games, which I love.

I can't quite but think that I'm on here talking to myself though. Dont get me wrong those of you who have come through are more than welcome. But I kinda wish someone would say hi.

Gaming today I'm afraid

So Monday is rapidly approaching. That's our games night round here. Attracts all sorts, mostly tabletop war-games and MtG games, but every other week we hold our DnD campaign.

It's grown and shrunk as people move away or new people start playing. There's currently 6 of us plus the DM, usual bunch of characters, but with a slight twist. It's an evil campaign. That is, rather than play the heroes we are playing as the bad guys. A wizard, cleric, war forged fighter, ninga theify dude, a dwarf and the sarge. Part of a typically evil army subjugating masses ect ect. 3.5 rulebook, because. Just because ok?
Anyway, we are supposed to be an elite "chosen man" kind of special ops deal. But I maintain we are the reprobates none else wanted.

Playing an evil campaign makes for an unusual party dynamic, due to the lack of healing. Now a good aligned cleric can swop any of his prepared spells for a similar level heal spell. Great, since he can take all the lovely useful spells and swop out if things get tricky.
Not so the evil cleric. Being able to swop for inflict harm is situationally awesome. But it means you have to waste valuable spell slots to take heal.

This can be a massive problem if you don't just want to sit there spamming cure.
There are ways round it.
Load up on heals if your party's short. Obviously

Not that you have to use all of them, even as a level 5 character, I'm managing to keep everyone alive while still rocking animate dead and various summon spells.
Playing a priest of death in an evil campaign makes sense, since raising undead is only a little different to turning them. It took a little while to find my feet with him. He's solid as a rock, AC 23 is amazing for a level 5. But his damage output is small. Only d8+1 per hit. It took a few sessions to work out how to play him. In the end it was an aquatic attack by mind controlling squid that really got the rest of the party sit up, take notice and stop viewing me as a portable med bay.

Basically the DM was being a little evil and picked the war forged and the sarge as his targets. So they both turned on the party. Not such a problem for me, since I can sit there with the war forged for a fair few rounds without issues. But the sarge is a tough nut, with a pair of ranged touch attacks a turn each dealing out 2d6 damage. He turned them on the wizard. Things went downhill quickly. The ninja lacks any kind of non lethal, well anything, he's a ninja! And the dwarf is more than a little banged up from the last encounter.

Thankfully for the continuation of the party. A rather amusing idea came to me. I summoned 2 undead squid. Nothing particularly amazing about them, except their ability to grapple. Sending one against the war forged and one against the sarge they were both quickly tied up and unable to harm the party.

Genius, if I do say say so myself. sadly at the end of the encounter the ungrateful bloody wizard threw a fireball at my lovely friends and exclaimed loudly "mmm calamari" sigh. Evil bastard.

If you have the ability to summon things, always think about what you want to summon. Not everything has to be all hack and slash.

Biking Biking

I broke a few bones last year, and like everyone who does so, I didn't keep up with my physio. I'm not unfit by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not as trim as I used to be.
Decided to get myself back into shape! Found a nice new route along the River Wey. About 40 miles in total. Nice little trip, took me 3.5 hours yesterday, which I'm rather proud of, given the temperature and the condition of the track. Hoping to get it down to under 3 hours by the time summer starts properly and then I'll start climbing again. The Wey Navigation is a lovely route for those of you in Surrey. Almost 20 miles long between Godalming and the Thames Lock. The track surface does vary greatly though, while it's fine for a decent mountain bike, I wouldn't want to try it with a racing bike.
Only managed 30 miles today, was far to hot to finish and my legs still ache from yesterday. It will get better with time.

I can't understand why people would join gyms and hire personal trainers when they can just go running or biking. I mean, it doesn't help with determination, thousands of us give up going in Feburary but keep paying because it makes us feel better. So why do we keep paying them? Are we really so unimaginative that we need someone to tell us how to exercise?
Go outside and find somewhere real to run!

First Post!

Been meaning to start a blog for ever now. Finally have some time to myself so I'm getting on with it. It's been a new years resolution of mine for a few years now.

I'm 23. And I'm a massive geek. I play DnD, and all manner of tabletop games. Not so big on the video games though. I also do reenactments and I LARP on occasion.


Oddly I'm also a fitness junkie and happily involved.

So much for preconceptions.


Don't get me wrong, I can understand why people take the piss out of gamers. And believe me, on occasion its more than warranted. Anyone wanting a quick laugh can YouTube "lightning bolt" and see some complete idiots. Like any social clique, some people take it too far.

Still most gamers I know are fairly successful, and not a single one lives in his mothers basement! Hell, I can only name one or two overweight gamers in my local area. Most of us are in pretty good shape. A lot of the reenactors are in amazing shape, carrying around that much metal all day and fighting in it tends to keep you trim.
Still, gamers seem to get a bad rep from most nearly everyone these days. Despite the fact that nearly everyone has a games console of some kind.

I think the biggest problem is that you can't tell people about RPGs or LARPing without it sounding silly. The only decent way I've found to do it is to get people to come along and TRY it. While nearly everyone will laugh at the idea of dressing up and pretending it's still the middle ages, I have never met anyone who didn't enjoy it immensely once they have been dragged along. Gamers, on the whole, are one of the most welcoming groups out there, and most groups will bend over backwards making sure that people enjoy themselves.

This could rapidly turn into a massive rant about people unfairly treating other people but meh. Bottom line. Don't judge anyone based on something you've seen on YouTube, or aren't willing to try yourself.

For anyone still reading this well done! I'm not sure why you're still here, or where I'm going to go with this blog, but I guess we shall see hmmm?