Once that was done though we sailed through it. At first the marines ploughed through everything but once they began to encounter lots of Androids and the dreadnaught they began to drop like flies.

In the end the forces of evil won. The marines will get another shot next week!

I still game every Thursday although it is rare that I get a game of 40K in. Most of my time has been spent running and playing in a blood bowl league. In between that I have found time for some necromunda and a few random games the guys from down the club bring in.

Now that I have moved house I Finally have my own geek room, a little summer house situated in the garden that I can spend some time in and paint and assemble the still largely unpainted pile of miniatures.

At the moment, the current blood bowl season is winding down some are looking for a gaming fix to keep us going over the summer. As an almost afterthought I reached for my old copy of warhammer quest last week and it went down well, so much so that this thursday we will be starting a small campaign. It looks like we will have 6 or so of us playing zoned will need to adapt the number monsters that appear but I am sure we can handle it. I will hopefully let you know how we get on

I have a nice box which I plan to fit everything into, including paints, cases etc. The only exception to this is my Rulebooks, which sit on the book case and anything I am planning on selling. The theory is that if something doesn’t fit in the box it has to go. This has made me become inventive in the way I pack things. I have found that Sprues have can broken down into chunks, boxes can be collapsed and you can fit a lot more models into a space if they are lose in a bag rather then sitting together in a box.

As you can imagine all this sorting out has highlighted a lot of stuff that has to go. Some of it I don’t want to lose but I havent used them in so long. One of the things that I have selected for sle is my Preatorians! They are something I never thought I would get rid off but after 6 or 8 years of sitting there it is time to let go and give somebody else the chance to collect them.

The first thing on my list to do is sort out all the sprues I have lying around. I reckon that if I cut them up and place the bits in little bags then they will take up a lot less room in my box.

With only a week to prepare I decided on an open format. This meant that if anybody wanted to join after we had begun, or anybody wanted to drop out then there would not be to many problems. Plus with Christmas fast approaching (well it was then) most people would be missing for a few weeks so organising a fixed schedule would be next to impossible.

To make things fair for the people who would not be able to play regularly we decided to work out the teams league points by dividing the points earned by the number of games played. The only disadvantage of this was that if somebody only played one games and won then they would sit at the top of the league until somebody got a better Touch Down average then them. To get around this we decided that a team had zero points until they played at least two games.

So after a quick lunch break typing all the rules up we began. With only four teams things could have gotten repetitive quickly but as it turns out I got really lucky and got a good set of gamers who are always fun to play against.

I started work on building a league tracking system using PHP back in November as our main website but as always real life raised its ugly head. I started to miss a few games and it looked like I would not be back for a while. Fortunately for me Alex stepped up and took over. He created us a lovely website and is now writing all our newsletters. Without him the league might have stumbled but it carries on to this day.

We are now 2 months in and fast approaching the end of the Open Season. Soon we will begin the playoffs to decide the HDWSBBL Champion. Now that everything is more settled at home I can hopefully turn up for a few matches and Guide Ragnar’s Swift Velocity to the Championship.

After that who knows, Hopefully we will attract a few more players next time and run in a fixed window. One thing for sure is that I will no underestimate the amount of work required in running a Blood Bowl League!

 I does mean a new trend is developing though. First Forge World release their own game and now Black Industries. Does this mean that more of Games Workshops sub-companies will release more targeted games. Maybe this will mean the return of Warhammer Quest or even Space Hulk. Maybe Forge World will even take over some of the specialist games range. I would love them to produce some Blood Bowl models!

Finish my Hexalon XVI Imperial Guard Army.

I had aimed for May last year but I have since overshot by 7-8 months! This year I intend to finish them off, or at least finish 1500 points worth

Sort out my collection!

Increasing pressure at home means that my space that I store all my stuff is getting smaller and smaller. This means that I will more then likely have to sell off some stuff. It looks like I will be getting rid of my Eldar army and my Praetorians!

Finish my Blood Bowl Team.

They are almost there, just got to base them. In the distance I plan to replace them with a new team but depending on how well the above point goes I may have to cancel that plan.

Enter the Blood Bowl Tournament.

This year I am determined to enter the big tournament in May. I have been saying I will do it for a while now and this year is the time I will actually do it. I may try and rope in some of the players from the local gaming group so I don’t go alone.

Collect a small air force for Auronautica Imperialis.

Yep, no matter what happens I will succumb to the temptation and collect a small force (6 planes) for Forge Worlds new game. Just don’t tell the Wife!

Spend more time painting.

I started off good last year but as the year progressed building a Blood Bowl League tracker on my Computer sidetracked me. As that is almost finished I will divert my energy into painting.

Encourage more feedback.

I know there are a few of you out there because I get the stats. I plan to try to encourage you to comment once or twice a year, even if it is to harass me!

That’s all I can think of for the time being. Hopefully this will be a good year for my hobby. In 2006 I got the taste of it back so this year I will hopefully expand upon that.

For the next week or so I will be going on Honeymoon so I don’t imagine that I will be doing a lot of posting or anything related to gaming at all. In all likely hood I won’t be doing too much on-line until the new year where things should start to pick up.

So please bear with me and I should have a few things up and running again soon.

It was a good game that went back and fourth. I did have some early luck managing to score two Touchdowns in the first 4 turns! The Orc’s hit back though and exploited a gap in my defence to rush through and score a Touchdown.

The second half was a mad scramble for the ball with it bouncing between 4 people all trying to lay their hands on it. In the end one of my Catchers broke away with the ball making the final score 3-1. While I didn’t suffer any casualties I did take a few knocks and learnt a few more tricks for next time.

While these games don’t count for anything (they are just friendly games) It has reminded me of all the tactics I have forgotten throughout the ages. My Catchers are off the scale at present, each scoring every game. I do have a bit of problem in the defence area and I still haven’t managed to cause a casualty. I am sure these things will be rectified in time.

The best news though of the whole evening is that it looks like a Blood Bowl league is finally starting! I got chatting to people last week about it and they all appeared interested. When I went last night (the match report of which will be appearing soon) we all agreed to start the league next week. We have had to go for an open format due to the fact that we will be missing a few weeks due to various commitments in the run up to Christmas. All I have to do is do some more work on my Blood Bowl computer software so it is ready in time for next Thursday.

So bear with me for the time being, it looks like all my other projects are going on the back burner as I lunge full force into Blood Bowl.

Over the last few years we have seen a steady increase in the amount of plastic miniatures that Games-Workshop have produced. This has brought many benefits including more unique looking armies and making it much (relatively) cheaper to collect an army. One of the side effects though is that less metal miniatures are being produced.

I find that when a model has been crafted in metal it generally is sculpted in one pose. This makes the sculptor put more detail into it as the miniature can only be assembles and displayed one way. With plastic miniatures the sculptor has to account for the bits being combined in many different manners and so has to sculpt less details. I find myself missing the lack of details on some of the miniatures these days. Some of my favourite miniatures to paint are the old metal ones from the Rogue Trader days. I feel these miniatures have so much character compared to the standard plastic regiments these days. That’s not to say I don’t like the modern ones, in fact I find them great for bulking up my army, its just that I wish they had a little bit more life in them.

It’s not all doom and gloom though for our old metal friend. The new Elder range has quite a few fantastic metal miniatures in the range that I am planning to purchase. I feel that the army commander should be a very characterfull figure which I have seen very few plastic kits achieve, There is a new trend to release the army’s commander in a multi-part plastic form which is a bit worrying. The Space marine commander was excellent and if they are all like this then I am happy to eat my words about the lack of details in plastics, it is if they are all like the new Orc Warboss plastic set then I am worried about the future of the commander sculpts.