Turelio's Hobby Hoard

NB: This was written a while ago, but never published. When I say 'over the weekend', it was a few months ago... Over the weekend I encountered an RPG in play, and overheard one of the NPCs interacting with the players, and I overhead a snippet of the game which was something like: She waves her hands in a strange pattern and mutters some arcane words you don't understand. Her appearance is no longer disheveled. She thanks you for your help. When the players asked about her, she replied: "I am but a simple merchant, who was waylaid by bandits..." Wait a moment... I've heard this before... I've realised that there are some tropes about role playing characters that do get played out a bit. Quests turn into the murder-hobo tour, princesses are captured by dragons, magic swords are a standard first magic item reward. But I never twigged to the following formula being used so much:  I am but a (adjective indicating they do not think highly of ...

At dinner tonight, I made the following post onto Facebook from the restaurant... I've never played or ran a Cyberpunk RPG. I have very little knowledge of the genre. But I feel I need to run one now with everyone starting with a similar set up. This popped into my head: You take your seat inside the small booth, sliding behind the table. Your Contractor slides into a matching seat across from you. The circular room houses another seven near-identical booths, and you watch them fill up over the next few minutes - Pairings of Contractors and Data Jockeys in each booth, glancing around at the others and tapping at menu screens the same way you do. Five minutes go by while you're forced to listen to a pop song from five years ago remixed to a digital beat that could possibly have been sourced from the latest stock market feed. That's been the rage lately.  Your drinks are delivered, ushered into your booth by a team of serving staff wearing the most up to date fashi...

A few days ago, Wyrd released further details on the new Masters and crews being released at Gencon in a few weeks to go with the new book, Ripples of Fate. I had a few things bumping around my head about the way the new Masters seem to operate, their crew boxes, and a few other things that have struck me. So first of all, if you want to see the run of crew boxes including model renders, they are viewable HERE . I'd post photos here, but I'm not too sure how that sits with use of Wyrd IP, so I'll just play safe and leave it. I'll link to each of the Masters as they listed as well, so if you want to see their cards, Wyrd's tactica and so on, click the Master name, and you'll get taken there. I'll run through my initial thoughts on them, why I'd be worried about facing them, and why I'd be interested in playing them. The Guild - Nellie Cochrane What Do They Do?  Nellie's theme seems to be the Evidence condition, something (and possibly oth...

So, a quick update to explain why my painting has been getting slower lately, why it's going to be really slow for the next few weeks, and why it should pick up again soon. I celebrated my final day of being 32 by having a surgeon perform what I am assured was a simple conversion on my arm. This meant that I started my 33rd year by pressing a morphine button, and ended the day with this photo. Fire and blood. Welcome to Westeros Medical.  For the last ten years or so, I have had an osteochondroma  on my arm. I won't go into gory details here, but essentially it was a bone spur on my left arm just beneath the shoulder. When it was first found it wasn't visible, but about seven years ago it started to be visible through a shirt sleeve unless I had my arm twisted around, and for the last few years it was visible to a point that wasn't able to be hidden.  One of the annoying things for the last few years has been that it's something stuck beneath t...

Yeeeeaaaahhhhh.... Sorry 'bout that. I totally intended to keep blogging. Honestly. And then I get busy. So a bit of an update on what I have been doing for most of the year, and what has been keeping me off the blog: Each year I set out with the intent to do more blog work. It's fun, I enjoy it, and I like being able to clear my head about stuff and show progress. This year though, I lost track of time in a big way. Part of that time was GenCon. This year was my first trip there, overseas with friends, attending a mini painting comp while there. While it was great fun, and I dearly want to do it again next year, the comp hung over my head as soon as CanCon ended in January. It's very hard to ignore when you start booking trips so soon after one con, and it seemed to rush the time through. So that ended up over my head for several months as I (as usual) bit off more than I could chew, and tried to get everything done in time. Not long after I got back, I started plann...

So I'll start by pointing out that this is part of the reason I've been worn out lately. I've been really busy lately, and it's left me rather drained. Blogging has been the last thing in my mind, sadly. Also, there aren't any images in this post... yet. I'll add them in later, but I seem to have lost most of the images from the last month on my laptop somewhere. Anyway, on with the fun and games!

So, I'm going to try a strange tactic... I'm going to discuss my thoughts on how to run something in Malifaux openly, a few months away from a tournament. Admittedly, I'm not in this to win, but I'm pretty sure this is listed close to the top of The Art of War Do Not Do list. But, it's all in the name of fun... For those of you who have been with the blog a while, you'll probably know that my first steps into Malifaux were under the watchful eye of Pandora. Originally I had trouble using her, but when I managed to figure out how she worked, I started to get really good with her. I wasn't perfect, and my friends new my plans well enough to devise their own counters, for which I had to counter, and at the end of the day, I really like a game that lets that evolving concept grow, especially when I find use for models I have little to no previous interest in.

OK, I went away for six weeks, and Blogger changes its layout... Not weird at all... Anyway, I need to get some new photos up soon (The reason there have been a lack of posts is I was focused too much on painting). However, I thought I would share this video which I found via Twitter earlier this week by ichibanpainting. My hands shake normally, but thisreally helps cut down the shaking I have found: The only thing I would suggest that you use wide rubber bands. The wider it is, the more spread out the pressure on your wrists and fingers is. I used some thin rubber bands I had on hand, and after about 50 minutes, they had left purple bruises around my hands, and had dug into them. Going to a wider band didn't remove the problem, but did make it a lot less obvious, and it cleared up quicker. I'll get some photos up in the next few days. If you are interested in more of ichibanpainting's videos, they can be found here: IchibanPainting

***I'm going to say that this isn't really an open letter to GW or something of the sort, but we trying to figure out why GW have gone down the path they have with the Finecast models. A bit of a weird exercise, but it was a lot easier to put these thoughts in order as if addressing GW themselves. Also, sorry for two Random Thought posts in a row after the lack of blog entries. I'll have a few new model related things soon. I just need to take the time to do the photos. *** Dear Games Workshop, I'm going to start this by saying that I am going to make an effort. The effort is that I won't end up whining about completely useless topics, such as why army X hasn't had a new release in Y years, why I think dropping paint colour Z was the biggest marketing mistake you ever made, or why race S shouldn't have been written out of 40K by having race T eat them (OK, maybe that last one isn't too obscured). I'm going to make an effort to say my piece about ...

Yes, I'm running late with posts, so this is going to be a quick one, and another write-up (all text sorry) will get put up tomorrow afternoon... Anyway, this went up on the BBC website a few days ago. I know I'm late posting it, but I'll put it up anyway for those who didn't see it at first. It's interesting to see the number of comments in the article, as well as the quantity of those where there is a very positive vibe coming from the posters. BBC News - Why are adults still launching tabletop war?

I thought I would link to this article on Reddit. It's pretty long, but gives some insight into a few of GW's decisions which have seemed weird to fans in the past. IAMA former Games Workshop employee. AMA.

A friend pointed out to me today that he was looking through Colonel Shofer's blog, and noticed that he had linked to the Puppet Wars Multiplayer opening I posted yesterday! I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Colonel Shofer, and also welcome to anyone who has found this blog through his blog! If you'd like to look at his blog, it is located HERE!

Came across this video yesterday thanks to a friend. Turns out Peter Cushing was a miniature enthusiast and played Little Wars (The HG Wells rules): This guy killed Dracula (Among many other achievements). This hobby officially cannot get any more hardcore.

So new years has rolled around, and at the time of this going live, I'm honestly not sure what I will be doing. However, I'm typing this up ahead of time to get a few things ready to post on time. Anyway, I figured that I'd go through some of the bloggy things I've enjoyed this year... Dungeons & Dragons After not playing this since uni, I got invited to play in a campaign earlier in the year (which is still ongoing). I almost forgot how enjoyable this game can be, especially with a good group of people. So far the games have been fantastic, even if the other team got killed off two games in, leaving the 'regulars' team with a sense of dread nearly every game that this is the one we will finally be killed in. The story that has been created for it as well is full of plenty of side details to make a conspiracy theorist like me start to watch out for tiny elements that may come back later. And playing an Elf Ranger with a... not very obvious morale code and wh...

Just a quick post as I thought I should share a few things I have found in the past few days: First, a cool TMNT themed army that I found over on WargamerAU: Click Here in a timely manner Also, so cool trailers that have come out in the past few days: The Dark Knight Rises The Hobbit

So this ended up being one of those happy coincidences. A while ago at work, I realised that when I wasn't cleaning models to paint (That's a time killer that gets boring fast, and draws a lot of strange looks), I ended up messing around on my phone to the point that I would drain the batteries by 4pm, and be without a phone until I got home. I realised that with a little planning, and carefully selecting what I was going to paint, I could probably fit some painting in at work. So I dug together a box to pack my stuff in, and decided what paints and models to take with me: Now, I figured that I was going to be in a few uncomfortable positions what with there being no painting desks at work, and that I would have to do this outside. Inside at my desk no one would have a problem with, but I didn't want to have to explain this to everyone who walked by due to the amount of time I would lose, and this was going to end up being time critical to a point. That meant I was probably...

Today I came across an article from The Sun ( Here ) that David Tennant and Georgia Moffett have got engaged. It is from The Sun (So with no official confirmation, it's probably got as much credibility at the moment as the results from a Large Hadron Collider I could build on my flat using toilet paper rolls), but if it is true, congratulations to both of them. Either way, does this mean David Tennant officially wins the 'Living every Doctor Who fan's dream' award? From what I have read, he got into acting because he wanted to play Doctor Who (Mission accomplished). He then worked with the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison, who he has been quoted as saying is his favourite Doctor) and is no supposed to be engaged to Davison's daughter. He's also one of the fans favourite Doctors, and with the 50th anniversary on 2013, a lot of people believe he will come back to it in some way (Most likely as some sort of special). Does he get a trophy? Also, if these two have a kid, ...

Something that popped into my head today on the way home from work... I was talking to a manager as I walked out of work today who said he had seen people gathered in the car park yesterday, and it looked like the building next door might have had a fire drill. It made sense, because the last time there was a fire drill at our work we were told to move to a specific location because there was a building between us and the 'fire' so if something went wrong we were protected. Makes sense. Nothing blocks the rubble of a destroyed building than another building. About five minutes later, it occurred to me... What about the people in the 'barrier' building... Shouldn't you warn them? Or is the potential pillar of fire next door meant to be a surprise of some sort?