Are Forums going the way of the dino?

Now before I start whaffing this is my personal thoughts on this subject and I'm no web/tech type person just what I see with my mooching about the Internet,

So forums (or ebullient boards if your that old) are they actually any use to the gamer anymore?

The reason I'm going to waffle on this subject is that "back in the day" forums where the place to go for FAQ's new rules down loads and chewing the fat with people who also play the same system.

Best example for me would be mongoose publishing forums, I spent quite a bit of time on them talking about B5, starship troopers and Judge Dredd. I still have friends though that forum and it was a great place to hang out.


However now days I think the forum has seen its day thanks to the dreaded facebook, after all why do I need to long onto a dozen sites when I can fire up face book whilst on the throne and look at what people are chatting about and picture of what they have painted so much easier.

only recently was this reinforced though alien dungeon's forum for all quiet on the martian front, ok so the models and game are yet to arrive but the forums are very slow, and again with the prodos forum they did warzone and AVP once more a slow forum but the facebook group is quite lively.

You do still have some forums that are completely mental and attract a huge amount of interaction, one of many that I can think of would be Lead adventure forum and this covers all manner of systems and types, you still get the odd numpty who shouts the loudest as he thinks X is pants due to X, but I tend to ignore those types.

But its not all about Facebook, you have splintered groups example is the Wild west exodus uk group is separate to the American group and some groups are badly named again the deadzone group being called Containment Protocol DZ fanatics, well thought out if your searching for that!

so I suppose its a double edged sword, but I tend to lean more towards facebook groups as its easier to see whats happening but any FAQ's that are updated some kind soul will normally bang a link up and discussions will go from there the funniest one I saw was the recent aircraft rules for bolt action and yes I did get my popcorn for that one!

anyway what are your thoughts on this?

Playground bark into rocky scatter terrain!

With the semi decent weather now coming back to the UK, I dragged the GC down the park to escape cabin fever and stretch my legs,

As I was running around with isla I picked up a bit of bark...

this got my creative juices going as I wasn't some more broken/rough ground for the Saga night as well as the jungle & wild west board,

so after grabbing the hot glue gun, cutting some random cork shapes I came up with this...

like the previous lot that I did I've kept it scale free and nice and simple, really simple and as good as free!

only suggestion would be take your offspring otherwise you'll get some strange looks!

Regiments of Renown the aftermath!

A couple of weeks ago I ran a club night based on the regiments of renown rules that I lifted from the beasts of war website,

After an initial "what do you think?" I suddenly had a bunch of players all chomping at the bit to roll some dice and get it on!

I even put my own list together in case I had odd numbers,

Storm Vermin Fang leader, Armed with enchanted shield, Rathound bodyguard and tailweapon.
2 normal storm vermin
10 clan rats with shield
1 Poison wind globadier
2 night runners

and managed to get these painted up as well, but it wasn't to be I had quite a few comments with the amount of models but hey that's skaven for you!

As usual a couple of people drop out which wasn't a huge problem as it still kept the numbers even, I was unsure how long the games would last so planned for two initialy and in the end managed to get three individual games in with a finial game of light verses dark at the end.

so various pics from the night, loads of fun was had and I'm planning on a second night at some point.

Dreadball robot team

This was another "I'll just do these" moments...

So I've had the Robot team kicking about for quite a while and with some spare time I slapped the paint on and this was the result,

so the whole team,

Jacks,

Strikers,

Guards,

MVP and a prone marker.

I decided on differant colours for each of the player types so that I could make it easier to keep track whilst I was playing, the one thing that I'm not too sure on is the numbering of the players as they transform mid game, but I can suss that out at some point.

The edges of the hexs were simply coloured in with a red sharpie, nice easy paint scheme for the team.

Gruntz finishing off bits and bobs!

So way back last year I was putting some finishing touches to my gruntz stuff.

Recently whilst looking for something else I stumbled across some extra khurasan minitures so as I had just done my Skaven for my Regiments of Renown I fancied something a little differant before the madness of the Salute board landed on my door step!

so I managed the following lot in a couple of nights,

more VDV power armoured guys.

a load of Federation guys

a scout unit on hover bikes, I'm yet to do a unit card for these guys yet, but I'm sure I'll knock one up 2 hours before a planned game!

a couple of AA gun carriages, the great thing about these are that they are interchangable with the mortar cross supports.

All I need to do for my gruntz is the two doe gunships, the second black ivan and the two interceptors, so now I've even more for my gruntz I suppose I should really get some more games in!

adding to the jungle...

With the recent announcement from Prodos that wave two kickstarters will be sorted out soon, I figured I should round off the jungle table.

I was unsure what was needed so as usual I went on gut instinct and ordered a box of Dust quonset huts, price was about 18 quid for 6 of them and overall I'm quite happy with them

scale wise they are spot on as seen by the space marine, the quality of the models are great and dead simple to stick together,

a quick blast of British armour green, and then a light dry brush over that,

hit it with some wash to dirty it up,

paint the window frames black,

and there you have it, super quick and will look great when the whole lot is set up,

I've got some security fences from warmill that I'm going to weather and once they are done that's the jungle board just about done,

Febuary Round up & the pledge....

So another month flies by and we're into March already!

So what else did I manage to crack out his month?

In preperation for show season I've done some more flaming markers for the modern games that we do, turning clump foliage...

into this!

Some of the guys managed to get over to hammerhead this weekend and I blasted out a control tower out for the table

as a brucey bonus the guys walked away with most visually appealing film,

so onto the actual pledge...

Bought - 72
Painted - 116
Differance + 44

so a cracking result for the month and the "bought pile" went a tad mental!

Onto the goals for 2014.....

4x4 Jungle board - in progress....
4x4 old west/wild west exodus board - still outstanding

Finish off some projects:
Cybertronic for warzone - Done
Enforcers for deadzone - Done
Terrain for deadzone - Done 
Enlightened & Outlaws for WWX - in progress....
Zee dreadball team - still outstanding
Malifaux Gremlins - still outstanding
Plague reaper for 40K escalation - still outstanding
Orks for 40K (not finish but do enough for 2K) - still outstanding
Finish off the 5th Company including the drop pods - still outstanding
Orcnar for Relics - still outstanding

New systems & Projects that I've not kickstarted:
Judge Dredd -  Have the rulebook models needed possible salute pick up?
Muskets & Tomahawks - Have the rulebook models needed possible salute pick up?
Italians for boltaction - Have the Army book just need to actually read it!