Tuesday 28 July 2015

Use it or lose it.

Right.

Haven't played WoW for years...

Not about to start again. It was cool at the time, but life moves on; situations change, plans change, interests change...

But there are a few things going on that I would like to put up in a blog and I remembered that I had one already set up. I could do one that's more appropriate to the topics, but, sod it - I'm too lazy for that.

So, things that I'm going to use this blog for are pretty much going to revolve around miniatures wargaming.

I've rediscovered my childhood hobby. From the age of 12, I was painting, collecting and playing with toy soldiers. That was what I did. Wargames, board games, role-playing games - a hobby that lasted several years.

Going to university can rob you of your childhood friends if you let it and I did. Not having the usual folks around to play with tends to kill off that hobby.

Fast forward many, many years...

I remembered that I used to like painting miniatures as a teenager, I wanted to do something creative to balance my life. I bought new minis, new paints and new brushes; I dabbled in the male equivalent of knitting. I also discovered websites, podcasts and blogs devoted to the hobby - things had changed since I were a lad!

A couple of years of this have culminated in playing the X-Wing miniatures game as well as (possibly) the greatest game of all - Infinity by Corvus Belli.

I'm having fun collecting, building, converting and playing with toy soldiers again; I've learned a lot about this hobby over the past few years, got "better" at it and come to an understanding of why I do it, in ways that would have been impossible twenty years ago.

I'm going to use this blog to encourage me to take photos of things that I've painted and converted. I'd like to put some effort into taking decent photographs rather than awful camera-phone shots with horrendous backgrounds and godawful lighting. I'd like somewhere to stick the results - here is as good a place as any.

Maybe, I'll write a few things about games of Infinity that I've played. Battle reports, they will not be, but maybe a couple of observations and lessons learned - with photos!

Which leads us to the next thing that I'd like to dabble in: Frostgrave.

A fantasy, skirmish, wargame played with a handful of miniatures in relatively simple way that takes me back to my early days of this hobby. I'm not pretending that I'm going to be getting super deep into it (that level of obsession is reserved for Infinity), but it might be fun.

I will be using various undead models for my band of treasure hunters in Frostgrave... that's why the blog title gets to stay the way it is.