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!

Read More

King Of War V2

Woohoo my kickstarter arrived, and  on time, I've had a read of the rules and to me everything seems similar to the first version except all those things people didn't like, getting charged in the rear by a flying unit and spending 2 turns to face only to have them fly off and recharge you in the rare again!.

Now my Kickstarter arrived and so did 2 other Rulebooks I thought I decided against ordering them due to the shipping but they were included so I got all of the above and 2 additional rulebooks I gave one to a friend and I'm going to give one away on the Behind Enemy Lines podcast. 

So a new version comes along and if you're a Warhammer player you're probably wondering whats been written out, what have GW forgotten or who's been nerfed etc.

 Well above you there (minus my Necromancer) is my old 1000 point list also in the same picture is my 1000 V2 list throughout the changes and  balances I lost 10 points this meant my Necromancer didn't get his artifact the made the enemy deploy additional units rather than the I go you go, no biggy it's never really helped.

So how does it play under V2 well just like V1 but with all the things you hated gone. I had a game against a Warhammer refugee and he absolutely loved it even though I won and what makes the game even cooler is now they have lists for all the Warhammer races so if you're a Beastmen fan you can use the Herd, Skaven fans use the Ratkin the lists keep going on, oh and here are all the lists kow2.easyarmy.com . So far it's a great game and because of it's fortunate timing with AOS coming out it's become very popular. Now I'm just waiting for their sci-fi game Warpath to see if that's worth picking up.

Read More

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Play the below video while remembering the Good times not the End Times

I didn't think Games Workshop would or could do it but they did. They've killed Warhammer Fantasy. I checked my calendar just to make sure it wasn't April 1st but nope, it was July 4 2015 American Independence day, and the day Warhammer Fantasy was put down........

Warhammer Players try not too cry too much

The Age of Sigmar is upon us which if you've been following the end times fluff means the Warhammer World as you and I knew it has been destroyed and replaced with small civilizations escaping through portals to realms elsewhere blah, blah, blah.....What this really is, is a failed attempt at deus ex machina.

Warhammer Fantasy was only accounting for about 13% of sales and the game which generally only appealed to the older wargamer, this is no longer Games Workshops target demographic, GW's target is more likely the children of Fantasy players. Get them in, sell em a boxset, GTFO, Profit. Not exactly a winning business plan, but fuck it, share holders need their dividends.

Enter Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Fantasies brain damaged cousin, firstly it introduces us to a new race of Space Marines as usual GW's pricing puts it out of range of most first time wargamers ,which it looks to be designed for, at $250NZD you get the below toys and the 30K/40K players are really excited about the new mini's.

Sweet Hellbrute bro...

FOR SIGMa......err SANGUINIUS

Now the rules are soo strange there's no points system I'm not going to go deep into it I'm leaving the analysis for better blogs for folks who passed English in high school and know the right place for an oxford comma. But sufficed to say when I heard that player interaction effected game-play beyond rolling dice I called BS lies silly, silly lies but alas they were all true.

Machete don't dance

I'm not sure what was going through their heads while writing this although I suspect someone had access to some high grade warp dust cos motherfuckers gone bananas!

Options: Now asides from the knee-jerk reactions to drop all your toys on Ebay or burning everything and putting it on Youtube. Crying until the pain goes away is another option but it still doesn't get your fantasy fix. Bullet point time bitches....

1. Carry on playing 8th edition make sure you've got that FAQ saved also a fine gentleman has purchased the domain  nethammer.org so in the coming months it'll have the resources needed to survive.
2. Kings of War: One of the fastest growing mass fantasy battle games they've even been kind enough to include the races that are missing from their canon Kings of War . Once described by one of New Zealand's biggest wargaming trolls as "Warhammer with training wheels" oh how times have changed. They release their FREE V2 ruleset on July 10th this year.
3. Hmmm I ran out of ideas but 3 bullet points makes it look more professional I guess, I dunno.

Anyways as always they're your toys and ultimately you decide what you're going to do with your hobby time and money and since GW just gave you a big ol Fuck You you should probably spend it elsewhere.

Thanks for reading I always appreciate feedback so feel free to comment below...

  

Read More

Zero Dark Thirty

One of the reasons I go "dark" as it were for and extended amount of time is that I'm usually busy painting something. In this case I was painting 1000 point Undead Kings of War force and I tell after my first game I was hooked and by the looks of the Fantasy players next to us we may have made a few additional converts.

Results Were (and if I can remember armies)

Regan Winner with Elves
Jed 2nd with Orcs
Francis 3rd with Undead
Me 4th with Undead
Damian 5th and best sports with Ogres
And Last place but best painted Monkey with Abysmals Abyssals



Last weekend was the annual Battlecry convention and on the Sunday we had New Zealands first Kings of War tournament. Most of us already knew each other and are part of the same club. I came 4th with one win, 2 draws and 2 losses. My favorite part of the day was that there were 0 arguments about rules except where the Ogre player tried to explode his suicide cart in the wrong phase , Damian was a sad, sad panda.

Now if you're thinking about getting into a big battles fantasy game Kings Of War is the way to go. The rules are free on Mantics website you can build your army list here http://kow.easyarmy.com/ and because it's all on one big base you can use unit fillers like a boss!

Anyways a big thank you to Mighty Ape for sponsorship and David Grieg from Mighty Ape for the picture dump below ,I forgot my camera :(

  

Read More

Kings of War

Another game I've been sold on is Kings of War. I always wanted to get into Warhammer Fantasy but the price and the rules and the 4+ hours for a game kept me away. Then I saw Beasts of War were doing a Kings of War demo and it honestly seems pretty fast and fun.

From what I've seen it looks as though you don't remove individual mini's but when the unit fails a test the whole thing is gone and that your opponent does all the rolling (no saves etc) this cuts down on time. Secondly the price for $87 NZD I have a starter army and for about $25 - $30 I can add on extra boxes of goblins, zombies or whatever. This is definitely something for 2014.  

Read More