Blog News: Egyptians, Living History and Blood Bowl

Well, it's been a while since I posted something that I wrote myself, since I've had tutorials written by friends to post up recently. Makes me feel kind of guilty... Things have been happening though, albeit not so much  here on the blog. Now that work has quietened down for the summer, I've managed to become a bit more productive in the hobby arena.

Like most long time gamers I've acquired a lot of stuff over the years and over the last couple of weeks I've been spending quite a bit of time sorting things out and putting them into some kind of order. The role playing stuff was relatively straightforward as I simply had to sort out books and throw away character sheets and campaign notes that I'd accumulated over the years. Despite the sentimental value of stuff that I'd written when I was a teenager I steeled myself and ruthlessly binned things. Sorting through my miniatures collection on the other hand is a much bigger job, mostly because I've not been terribly systematic about storing things in the past. Plus there's far less stuff that I can bring myself to simply throw away! It's quite rewarding though, and I've rediscovered a lot of old friends, some of whom which be useful in the near future. I now have plenty of orc and undead models to use as baddies in my RPGs. This is particularly handy since the players in my Pathfinder campaign are about to get involved in a war.  :-)

If you read this blog regularly, you've probably noticed I'm playing and organizing a Greek/Celtic/Egyptian/Persian mythic skirmish campaign using Song of Blades and Heroes which has been a lot of fun. The army lists I wrote seem to be working quite well so far although it looks like the Greeks need a bit of a boost as they're struggling against hordes of Persian undead.

I've also set myself the goal of getting a 300 point warband for each faction painted  by 1st September. So far I've nearly got the Greeks and Celts done and I've started on the Egyptians. I snapped a quick picture to show post up.  The guy with the blue shield is my finished test model and the others are painting in progress. They're from Wargods of Aegyptus by Crocodile Games and they're really nice models to paint, quite big with nicely defined areas and just the right amount of detail for my tastes.

Egyptians - painting in progress

It hasn't all been indoor activities though, I've also been on a few trips, notably to History Live 2013 up near Northampton. It's a big event with lectures from popular historians and 2000 reenactors covering everything from the Romans up to World War II.   It was a great weekend away with friends and family and there were loads of interesting things for a role-player and miniature painter to look at. Meeting reenactors is about as close to meeting real vikings or British Tommies as we'll ever get and it was great chatting with them. I took a load of photos which I'm slowly editing for the web so I can make a few posts with reference pictures for people. Some of them would be great inspiration for characters in an RPG and/or reference for miniature painters.

Norman shieldwall at History Live 2013

Just in case you thought I wasn't doing enough gaming, I'm meeting up with a friend for a game of Blood Bowl tomorrow. There's a league starting soon at the Gamers Guild - which is my FLGS - and I'm looking forward to a pre-season friendly to try out my roster. I've decided to do High Elves as I fancy playing a team that can handle the ball reliably. The last time I played in league I coached Vampires which was entertaining but mildly frustrating at times as it's a very random kind of team.

Looking ahead for Axes and Arrows, however, I've got a few things planned that I hope to get posted in the nearish future including: 

• How to paint strip miniatures
• How and why to thin your paints 
• Reference photos from History Live
• Giving players control of the story in a role-playing game
• More conversion tutorials

Plus there should be some posts of things I've painted over the summer once they're all done and photographed.

On that note, I'm off to do some more painting..