Z War One Video and Kickstarter

       

          

It has been a fair old while since I updated this blog, and some of you have been getting a little restless shall we say. I'd like to make it abundantly clear that neither I nor this blog is dead. However, I do think things are likely to remain 'sketchy' round here for some time yet I'm afraid. You see other things are still having to take precedence, and even my gaming time has taken a significant battering of late. So I figured I'd best keep my trap shut until I had something worth saying rather than force out articles that quite frankly would have been page filler at best.

How can you tell when a business is in trouble?

   
    

It starts counting pens! It's an old joke that organisations normally start looking at the little picture when times start getting a bit rough for them; and they start doing stupid things in a desperate bid to stave off the wolves at their metaphorical, and sometimes real, doors. 'Counting pens' is a joke often told by consultant types, but if any of you have ever worked at a place where the stationary cupboard has been locked, and a guardian appointed to protect it, you'll be aware of how depressingly true the old joke about counting pens truly is. I've seen companies implode in this way from the outside, and indeed from the inside. They start attributing their woes to external sources, or not enough micro-management. When the going gets tough in the corporate world, quite often it's the stupid that get going.

Companies do dumb, counter-intuitive things when times start getting a bit tough for them. Rather than asking serious questions about why it is the case that the companies bottom line sucks, or the KPI's are going in the wrong direction, because that would be wise and sensible, they plough ahead, just faster. Nope, they tend to assume that if they do more of the same, just better, things will improve. Rarely will someone ask the sensible question "hey, guys, is trying to sell fridges to Eskimos such a great business idea?". Nope, they appoint stationary cupboard guardians, and set researchers off to assess KPI's in minute details, everything becomes too close to view properly and nobody can see the bigger picture anymore. When that happens companies start making rash decisions that are counter-productive and expose themselves to even more risks.

I think it is part of human nature when in such a company to never want to ask whether actually you are doing a good job yourself. Not if you are working hard enough, just asking whether what you do is needed, or indeed efficient. Everyone is on edge, and people do feel besieged and vulnerable; people put their heads down and motor on, thinking blood, sweat and tears will win the day. So where am I heading with this. Well I'm going to talk about our hobbies favourite topic again, Games Workshop. Over the past few months they've done some pretty dumb things haven't they? I might not have commented on the online sales embargo, or their restriction on free trade for independents; and despite sharpening my pen over their claim to own all literary uses of the words 'Space Marines' I've stayed silent.

Salute 2013 is upon us!!!

    
     

But... I'm not attending this year, not that many of you will be reading this I'm sure. Last year I did a series of articles around Salute, and what I thought if the various stands, stores and games; you can read the start of my articles on salute here. What I think really hit me though about last years event was just how short, rushed and cramped the entire day felt. In short I really didn't enjoy traipsing down to London from my neck of the woods, and then trying to get out to the ExCeL site in a reasonable time frame. Because then you have to rush around all the stands and not really spend enough time, or as much time as I would have liked, at any of them. So I was left with a sense of frustration and disappointment in the main that I wasn't able to fully check out what I wanted to. Plus I think the hectic nature of the day also caused our otherwise placid nerdy brethren to act more like a bunch of humourless dicks than normal.

Sometimes it takes someone else to show you why...

        
        

My life is still a bit f a chaotic mess, and despite my best efforts to get back on top of everything, it's not going too well. I keep thinking I'm getting on top of things and sit down to write an article when something else pops up!!! Still that's life I guess, and we have to put up with it until we die. I've been doing writing of different varieties, mainly non-blogging stuff, and maybe one day you might get to see it, especially if I can figure out what to do about self publishing stuff. But I digress.

This morning I received an email from a chap I had an email conversation with over a year ago now. He stumbled across my little corner of the Interwebs while searching for anime images and stuff to inspire his own work. He was a non-wargamer, and the sight of some of the Infinity models and artwork got him all hot and bothered... in way only us nerds can get hot and bothered. He's never really heard of this wargaming hobby, living in the cultural backwater that is Australia.

Some of my crowd-funding swag has turned up!

  
   

This week a bit more of my crowd-funding swag has turned up. Obviously just over a month back now my Tentacle Bento stuff turned up, which was the first of the projects I'd supported and backed on my Blog to deliver the goods. But, on Wednesday I had the first major bunch of swag turn up from the Bushido Ito Indiegogo campaign, and then a day later the first batch of stuff from my DreadBall pledge turned up. So stuff has begun to roll in. It's actually quite bizarre to see packages turn up and not really know what they are, so it's like a lot of mini Christmas's. Although I totally knew that the DreadBall package was DreadBall. So it's pleasant to get these little presents you've brought yourself months and months ago suddenly turn up. Obviously I'm still waiting on any of my Gruntz and Sedition Wars stuff... plus Relic Knights, Freebooter's Fate and some other stuff I'm sure I've long since forgotten about! Hopefully though I will remember what the hell they are and make sure people do actually deliver my swag.

November 2012 was officially my best month

      
      

Well I think the title says it all really. November was my best month ever for hits (62,197) and comments (867), actually aided by that interview I did with Adam Poots and the exclusive reveals I did for the Southern Faction stuff for Heavy Gear Blitz, plus there were some quite hot topics of conversation in November. Any way, I just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who reads my waffle, and continues to comment in a sensible, mature and convivial manner on my blog. You guys really  help make this place what it is, so thanks a lot. I really do appreciate it. Peace out!

Quirkworthy on the Dreadball launch

    
   

As always I try to be as balanced as I can be about things. In my article about the Dreadball launch I pointed out I'd heard Mantic had, had some supply / manufacturing problems, and that it was good they were getting things out before Christmas. I also applauded them for moving the January pledges forward, however I also questioned the wisdom of Mantic giving certain stores preferential treatment and shipping to them first, whether this is a 'pre-release' or not, whatever the hell one of those is. I fully accept that I am now firmly in the slightly miffed camp, and as such I'm more than aware I'm not going to be as impartial or as even handed as I normally am... so if you want the other side of the coin can I suggest you go and take a look at this article on Quirkworthy, Jake Thornton's Blog in the interests of balanced reporting as it were, and getting a more rounded picture. Peace out!

The Hobbit

 

Well the worst kept secret since the last worst kept Games Workshop secret is out... yes, they're doing a game based on the Hobbit. I can hear the gasped shocks at the back of the room, and yes, I know, I didn't see that one coming either. OK, so I'll turn the sarcasm down a notch or three, because actually I'm not feeling all negative Nelly about it. True I'm not over the moon, frothing at the mouth and salivating like a starving man staring at a juicy T-bone stake cooked medium-rare, with peppercorn sauce... mmm. I'll let you all into a secret though, despite my floppy Finecast Gandalf I'm actually quite a fan of the Lord of the Rings range of miniatures. Arguably the painter in me feels it was the best range of miniatures Games Workshop have done so far. There were certainly some startlingly good miniatures amongst them... as well as some duffers... yeah I'm talking about the wonky faced Legolas from the Mines of Moria boxed set. However, I did pick up a few pieces and paint them from time to time simply for fun. So the prospect of new miniatures being added to the range is at least appealing to me on some level.

LotR's wasn't as rubbish as many people made out.

The bigger shock though, I'm sure for many of you, will be that I actually quite liked the Lord of the Rings game when it first came out. No, I wasn't duped by 50% off staff discount (although it helped) and being force fed White Dwarf. Nope I actually felt the game was quite good fun when it was played as it was clearly intended, as a small narrative based skirmish game. Honestly when playing things like the Attack at Weathertop missions et al, the game was actually really entertaining. I actually enjoyed it so much I was insane enough to volunteer being the intro games guy on launch day... and you know what? I enjoyed it despite not getting a lunch break due to the never ending queue. Where I personally think the game went wrong for me was the over saturation of LotR product that they brought out, and the fact they started trying to treat the game like one of their normal wargames, with factions and army lists and... blah. Didn't work for me, and I'm not sure the universe, or indeed the 'factions' lend themselves that well to a typical wargame product. Hence I think the reason they went for a narrative game the first time round.

Dreaball launch

  
  

I've been keeping an eye on how Mantic would deal with the Dreadball Kickstart campaign ever since a few of you who backed the campaign sent me emails asking what the hell was up with shops getting the product before those who had pledged on Kickstart to back it. Now I'll be honest, the majority of the complaints were from those who had backed the Kickstart campaign as part of the January release schedule. Many claimed they'd done so because the tone of the statement from Mantic was that they'd now in effect sold all their first batch to Kickstart backers and the next shipment would be in January. At the time I assumed that this would mean stores would be getting it in January too... because they'd run out of initial prints. Or that's certainly how I read it at the time. I think a lot of people who emailed me seemed to be slightly miffed at me as well as they'd pledged after reading my support for the project. However, as I had a steady stream of emails coming into me, asking if I'd heard anything about shops getting stock for the Christmas period.

Liebster Blog Award

       
        

Oh boy! This is one of those horrid little things that pops up on your Facebook page with a picture of a puppy, and says "if you don't like this picture it means you want puppies to get raped and murdered"... well OK so maybe it's not that bad, but you get the point. In a way it's spam, true it's nice spam, because it's somebody saying "hey I like your Blog" and that's always nice to hear, but normally I'd blank this stuff. However, TamsinP over at Wargaming Girl gave me a supposed 'Liebster Award' for my Blog. You can read why here. Now my German isn't great, in fact it's piss poor, but I thought Liester meant sweetheart or darling, does it? Any who the idea is that if somebody gives you an award you're supposed to write an article linking back to them and then give out five awards yourself... you can see why I think it's spam can't you? So why am I not ignoring it then? Well for two reasons:

1. I actually like TamsinP and her Blog, so I guess this gives me an opportunity to promote it for her here. And...
2. I actually think promoting other peoples Blog's is a good thing to do, and it's something that I do quite often myself any way.

So here goes, these are my 5 awards:

600,000 hits

 
    

Well I never. Seems I sailed past the 600,000 hits mark yesterday or the day before and didn't seem to catch it. I have to be honest and say I'm pretty darn chuffed with that actually. I'm roughly 18 months into writing this Blog and I think given I do all this on my own, and that I'm not part of a Blogging 'collective' that's pretty darn impressive. Of course though many of you will remember that at my 12 month Blog Birthday I set myself some pretty ambitious goals. I'll list them again for you:

• Have 1 million hits by end of year 2
• Have 1000 followers by end of year 2
• Have 10,000 comments by end of year 2

So how am I doing? Well on the followers score you can see for yourselves I'm at 917, so thank you all for that, as no doubt you're all responsible for that figure. So I'm not too far off of my 1000 followers target. Obviously though over the next 6 months I'm really going to have to go some to top out the 1000 followers target as I'm not sure there are that many more geeks out there! As to my comments target? Well my comments are roughly around the 8300 mark so that leaves me only needing 1700 odd in the remaining 6 months of year 2. Genuinely I think you'll all happily help me out with that one I reckon. But, how am I going on the big one? 1 million hits? Well at current rates I'd have to say I'm likely to fall way, way short of that figure, I'll probably look to reach maybe 800,000 if I'm lucky... ah well... it's good to have goals no matter how sodding unrealistic they are. Peace out!

Ravage Magazine

   
      

Ravage Magazine has been somewhat of a French institution for quite some time now. Indeed, whenever I found myself in France walking past a news stand I'd always look to see if they had a copy. Mainly so I could look at the pretty pictures, but also to try and translate the articles myself. Normally with quite comical effect. I don't mind admitting my French skills are not up to scratch. I'm OK with German, and I've been able to guy by in Scandinavian nations, but chuck me in at the deep end with the romance languages and I struggle. True I can order a cheese sandwich and a beer, but I'm not exactly able to communicate too successfully. So when I heard that the guys at Cool Mini or Not were looking to produce an English version of the magazine I have to say I was a little bit excited. After all Ravage magazine is one of the few hobby print publications that seems to be able to survive, if not thrive... so an English language version is an interesting proposition and one many hobbyists should be happy to see.

So is it any good? Well yes and no, early doors there have been some 'unique' and 'special' translation issues, which has led to some awkward syntax and phrasing. However, despite the odd sentence hiccup, which has caused my defective dyslexic brain to do more than the odd double take, it remains a riveting and informative read. I was very happy when I saw Maelstrom Games were stocking it, and readily gobbled up the first two issues. However, there was a problem with me acquiring issue 3 and 4, I'm pretty sure you can all guess as to the reasons why that was the case. Luckily for me and all you lot I have managed to find at least one other store here in the UK that stocks it, Valiant Games. Now this isn't a ringing endorsement, considering recent occurrences I won't be giving any of those out, some of you may have noticed I've removed the service score from my reviews. What I will say though is that David who runs Valiant Games also runs Basecraft and I've had no major problems, plus he seems like a decent chap... he could of course be a serial killer, I just doubt it. So what do I think of each issue so far:

The truth about Maelstrom Games

There have obviously been rumours about issues at Maelstrom Games for quite some time now. There was the issue with Battlefront Games and Gale Force 9 that actually resulted in them pulling supply of their product to Maelstrom Games, and the resulting fall out all of that caused. You can read Maelstom Games Battlefront Miniatures statement from that particular incident. I guess that was the first sign that things were not all that good and rosy in Mansfield. Then there has been the perennial problems they've seemed to have with getting a ready supply of stock, in particular Privateer Press stock over the last year or so. At first I brought the fact that they (Privateer Press) were struggling to keep up with demand... but that recently evaporated as a plausible reason when you looked around at other stores and saw they weren't having the same issues Maelstrom Games were having. Yet despite my personal suspicions I have never once had a problem with Maelstrom getting me the stock I've ordered, and the only time I had a slight issue it was sorted within 24 hours and that was the Hell Dorado book turning up water damaged.

Editorial Plug: Lost in the Warp

      
      

This is the miniature TKKultist will be painting, converted by Mike Butcher.

Every now and then I see that other Bloggers are up to cool stuff between them, and that it normally doesn't involve me. Which, lets face it is just downright sodding rude behaviour! Recently I stumbled across this post at Lost In The Warp. The idea is pretty simple, there are three bloggers who appear to be pretty good at converting and painting. These are TKKultist at the aforementioned Lost In the Warp, Michael Butcher at 'The Buther's Bill...' (look the three .'s are in the title of the Blog, I didn't add them) and PsychosisPC who writes 'The Madhouse Workshop', although if you take his banners word for it he runs The Madhouse Workshc... no I have no idea what a workshc is either, and I have no desire to find out. Sounds painful. Are you with me so far? Three Bloggers, who are good at painting, what are the chances they know each other? Pretty high actually, and it turns out they do. To try and drum up some traffic to their websites they've come up with this wizard wheeze of converting a miniature and then passing it on to one of the others to paint. Sort of like a toy soldier pass the parcel, but without the annoying music and multiple layers of wrapping paper... so actually sod all like pass the parcel. Any way I think it's an interesting idea and the guys do seem to have a modicum of talent with the old paint brush so I thought some of you guys might want to go check it all out. Peace out!

Are you a proper Wargamer?

     
      

CTRL+ALT+DEL is hilarious

There appears to be a bit of a 'meme' cropping up on my Blog roll. It was started over at the Wargaming Site by Phil Broeders. The idea is a Simple one, ask yourself a number of questions and if you can answer yes to most of them, apparently according to Phil, you can count yourself a proper wargamer. It's just a bit of fun, and some of the questions are too precise and prescriptive, but here goes my attempt:

Banner update

   
      

And... we're back to normal... sort of. Yeah I've gotten rid of my green and orange Halloween theme for zombie week as that is now over. Good lord do I not want to see another zombie game for a short while. I hope you all enjoyed my zombie related articles and reviews, as I actually put quite a bit of effort into the week and the reviews. Geek can not live on a diet of zombies alone though I have discovered! Some of the more eagle eyed amongst you actually noticed that there was more to my banner change last week than a green tint, and Frontline Zombie appearing in the title instead. A few actually noticed some new games being added to the list, and they are:

Top ten Zombie computer games and franchises

Well earlier on today I gave you my own personal list of top ten zombie flicks. That was hard enough as it was, but this task was significantly harder. Lets be honest here the computer games industry has a tendency to churn out sequel after sequel of a game that just so happens to perform well. Take Resident Evil for instance, which one of those would you pick? Well obviously it'd be Resident Evil 2, but wouldn't you feel even slightly bad you'd left out the Original and Resident Evil 4? I know I would. So this is my list of favourite zombie games and franchise... yeah that's a cop out, but it's my Blog and I make the rules... what you thought this was a democracy? Well it isn't, so here's your dictators list:

My top ten Zombie Films

Well for a bit of fun to finish off my "Zombie Week" I thought I'd do something a little bit different, well different for me as you'll find millions of these articles on the Internet, and give you a list of my top ten Zombie films of all time, and my reasons why. So yeah, I've reviewed my favourite Zombie films and given them a brains out of 10 rating. I hope you enjoy...

The best (and worst ) of the rest

       
         

Well obviously zombie week is drawing to a close. We have Saturday, which will hopefully have some fun little articles I've been working on, and on Sunday we have a vitally important public announcement in sermon form. However, before then we have the issue of zombie games I missed out on reviewing. Obviously I've reviewed a lot of zombie 'themed' product this week, and even delivered an interview with Rob Butler who is producing his own zombie game, Z War One. So the question remains what was the king of zombie games this week? Well that's a difficult one you know. I have soft spots for both Last Night on Earth and Zombicide, but for very, very different reasons. However, there can be only one, and I have to narrowly give it to Last Night on Earth... but only just. Zombicide was chomping right at its heels all the way.

There are though plenty of Zombie based product out there that I haven't reviewed this week. So what is the best of the rest, what did I miss out on? Well here's a list:

Disney Wars? WTF!!!

  
   

Princess Lemon does not approve.

OK well continuing my theme of writing one article a day that has stuff all to do with zombies, and stuff all to do with the hobby if yesterday's, and today's articles are to go by, I have to simply talk about the news that Disney has brought Lucas Films, and more importantly for geeks the rights to Star Wars. No biggy I guess, the whole Clone Wars cartoon thing meant that ultimately they'd want to buy the rights and own the whole thing and bring it under their umbrella. The really bad news comes from the fact that they're keeping George Lucas on a senior creative consultant... no, noooooooooooooooo!!! I jest of course, or do I. But seriously does George Lucas need anymore money? Apparently so because the sodding deal has netted the bugger $4bn US. Nice work if you can get it hey George, but I think it's possibly a shrewd purchase at that price. Seriously one of the worlds best loved and most iconic franchises for $4bn US, I'm sure many studio's would have bitten Georges chubby little hands off at that price.