FlamesCon 2015

*Slight Disclaimer in a moment of crazy after tourney brain I posted this to my clubs blog page you should visit it anyway for awesome after club reports etc http://tcownz.blogspot.co.nz/

It's that time of the year again! When we bring out our toys and make merry on the fields of battle. In a slight change from the last 10 years Battlefront asked local clubs if they'd like to take over as they are pretty busy with Team Yankee and other "Projects". So myself and a member of the North Shore Wargaming Club jointly opted to run FLAMESCON!

 Set up in Action

With 39 Players (One of the T.O's would fill in to make 40) we set up 20 tables we set fourth to making this FlamesCon as awesome as possible. An early Start at 9am with 2 hour 15 minute rounds of 1500 point Late War Armies. It's only Day 1 as I write this and the scores are moving, shifting and occasionally jumping in surprising ways. One player has come all the way from Italy!

Now for some pictures from the action!

Damian about to "Rush" his Hummel Tigers

Rob contemplates his next unit will it be Tetrarchs?

Tetrarchs so small, so tiny 

Rob Shirley preps his Berlin defences

Andrews' Finns ready to rumble

Davide who was over from Italy showed off his awesome Finns 

Red Steel faces off against the German menace

Steve London's PaK40 is ready to hold til the last

"Fury" as Greg Lockton charges down a flank

Davides' Finnish Artillery. Somehow he's managed to paint frost on them!

Davides' Finnish T-34/85 so pretty

Craig Ross' Breaching force leads the way

Damian Caufield's 6 pounders hold the forrest

While the Para's advance

Charge!

Faizals T-34 Army tries to make it's way down town

Only to run into Rob Shirley's formidable layered defense

TIGERS VOR!

Pat's Fascist Italians on the defensive 

The Red God of War

A Hetzer trying to Hetz (with ROF 3)

Kit's Nebelwefers about to unleash a barrage

Kit's Marder Haystack honestly nothing to see here just some hay

What has 8 wheels and AT12...This guy

Andy Duncans Brit Armour

An unusual force that had Andy Duncan leading VP's on Day 1

Can you actually surround a Tiger or have you fallen into his trap?

British Artillery protected by a pair of 17 Pounders

Dedov urges his Comrades forwards

Wayne Turners' urban based Soviets

More of  Waynes painting

Phil Petrys' SAS jeep 

Best way to back up an SAS Jeep? With Comets

The SAS Jeeps

The Comets

Davides Army below he won best painted

How do you even paint Frost!

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Work and Toy Soldiers

 I've been at my current company for 8 years I work on a system management team I also provide training for our online applications to internal staff and external insurance brokers. We're also called on upon to provide SME support on systems, projects, upgrades shit like that. I'm also well versed in Office buzzwords, have a Linkedin profile and can converse in internal acronyms.

Why am I telling you this boring stuff? Well I took a week off after the completion of some god awful project got released/fucked up and arrived back to find myself enrolled in a 5 day course, 5 whole days! Now I do systems training I usually sit at the back of the room and drive a projector people follow along ask questions and we're done in an hour. This training course was next level it taught us session plans, how to get peoples buy in, it was really good!

You're still reading I hope (this is a toy soldier blog after all)

So after the 4 days of being taught we were to re-convene back and give a half hour presentation on our chosen training topic. Naturally all the learning and development people went off and did things about learning, someone did something on changing the flag. I was going to force my audience to a half hour version of my knowledge hour but they're not the right crowd so what did I choose? 

HOW TO INK WASH A MINIATURE

Yeeeeaaa but is that really going to work?

I prepped 10 Mantic Zombies and got all the other attendees to write their favorite colours down so I could personalize the pants/rags(?) of the zombies and proceeded to record an entire how to video I also uploaded it to YouTube for safe keeping. The people doing the Inkwashing said they found it relaxing and the instructions we're fun and easy to follow. Although I do own about 3 of every Secret Weapon Ink wash now. Anyways without further ado the video.

I know it's basic but I got to paint toys at work and got paid to do it and am now a lot wiser when it comes to training. Thanks for reading and watching!

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