White Dwarf Anyone?

I have gone from being a regular White Dwarf reader in years past, never missing an issue to these days hardly ever buying it (I think the last issue I bought was some commemorative one marking so many years in print). Back when I started reading White Dwarf it was not solely a Games Workshop rag but was more of a general RPG magazine and I miss that very much as there were some great articles in those early editions.

I don’t play Warhammer or 40K or any other of the Games Workshop games these days (although I am very partial to a game of Space  Hulk) so their magazine has hasn’t been of much use to me other than eye candy but all the battle reports etc got in the way as I had no interest in them. All that being said I have never grown tired of Games Workshops figures, and game world backgrounds, the 40K universe is as rich and detailed as any imaginary universe you could wish for.

So now White Dwarf has had a major shakeup and is a weekly magazine and costs half the price of the old monthly edition and there is a monthly show case magazine called Warhammer Visions. I bought a copy of the smaller weekly edition last week, my first White Dwarf in years as the whole edition was dedicated to the new Imperial Knight model and it makes for a nice magazine to keep on the shelf (or at work to have a quick flip through at lunchtimes). With these smaller editions possibly dedicated to one subject each issue I will certainly keep my eye open and would probably start buying White Dwarf again on a subject by subject basis in future.

As to the new monthly Visions magazine, I have not seen a copy of that myself yet but over at the Tale of Painters blog there is a good and unbiased review of this new magazine and going by what it says there it might be time for me to search it out and have a look myself.

You can find the review here:
http://taleofpainters.blogspot.de/2014/03/review-warhammer-visions-issue-2.html

Coming Out of the Broom Cupboard

I haven’t indulged in any serious table-top gaming or figure painting in about 20 years now (seems crazy that it is that long ago!) but thanks to the badgering of my good friend and old gaming buddy Zrune Lord ( http://castrarunis.blogspot.co.uk/ ) I have really have got the buzz again!

Back in the day when I lived in Malta we had a great little group of gamers called The Caretakers of Insanity, just a handful of us but we had some memorable campaigns and characters, a lot of swearing, a lot of popcorn throwing and the ever threat of violence brewing just under the boil mainly due to the heat of those Maltese summers and certain players who were supposed to be umpiring but not watching the game…..yes, I’m looking at you, you know who you are!! But when all is said and done the most important thing was we had fun! Life moves on and sadly our little group is scattered to winds and 4 different countries, with only 2 of us in the same country (myself and my brother but even that situation isn’t ideal as we are about a 2 to 3 hour car journey apart).

Anyway, after all these years I decided to get some 15mm figures mainly because of the cost and the saving in shelve space over the larger 28mm figures but boy did I have a shock, 20 years on my eyes were unfortunately 20 years older too and I have to admit I was struggling and nearly knocked the whole idea of collecting figures again on the head! One visit to the opticians later however and armed with a shiny pair of reading spectacles I could see the damned things, got back to painting and was hooked! I even started converting some of them (with much prodding from Zrune lord via email) but more of that later in a post I will dedicate to the subject.

So here we are, I decided to start this blog (again due to lots of prodding from Zrune lord) mainly for my own enjoyment and to keep the old Caretakers up to date with what I am doing but if anyone else stumbles upon my blog and finds it of interest all well and good.