It's been an action packed last seven days of May... Firstly, I finally got the Serenity Flatts display game, I purchased from Dave Docherty, on the table, and the teddy bear fur mat (my third now) from Terrain Mats For Games in Hungary, really sets it all off nicely. Peter's mats are superb and he offers brilliant customer service to an international client base. Check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/terepszonyegek On Sunday, three of us gave the free 'Ruthless' gunfight rules an outing whilst the Memsahib pottered in the garden and prepared a good cold lunch for us.  We had Lawmen, Ne'er Do Wells and a group of Apache, all knocking seven shades of what's goof for the cacti, out of each other, to see how they played, and we were all very enthusiastic about them. We played for 6 hours in a convivial atmosphere, punctuated by some ripe language when things went awry. At 5PM-ish only the Apach were left standing, having skulked and sniped their way, right

Now with Orc boar riders in the line-up, for added snort, bang, wallop! http://kck.st/3oYcUnp 95% funded!  Yes, the Satanic Panic Miniatures 'Western Orc' Kickstarter is 98% funded and yesterday, 5 Orc boar riders with 6 variant mounts were added to the campaign after the sculptor pulled off a serious sculpting challenge to get them done before the end of the campaign.

 Following on from my previous post, I have also been musing over all the little things which made growing up in gaming so interesting for me, starting properly in 1981. Music and gaming always seem to have gone hand in hand, albeit more with the fantasy side of things, although I have a personal connection between historical gaming and the music of Big Country...  I would say that the majority of the fantasy gamers I met, be they tabletop or roleplaying devotees, were fans of rock in one of it's guises. Look, when you play games involving starships, elves and magic, you want music about is. Rock delievered that with interest payments.  The covers on the albums, the lyrics and the imagery all fed us and we indulged ourselves in it. I was already dipping a toe in the genre, and if you have read my memoir, you'll already know that with my best mate at the time, Alan, it was whilst on the track of an elusive Tygers Of Pan Tang picture disc, that we came across the Sheffield branch

Well, I spent most of the weekend, decorating the living room or getting over decorating the living room, so I got very little game related things done. I did however, spen a lot of time in my own thoughts, fuelled by matt white emulsion fumes (and the odd mouthful of that most alluring of paints). I was thinking on whether I would become a gamer if I encountered it afresh in 2023, and rapidly came to the conclusion - and quite a firm one - that I would not. The main draw for me was the mystery of this hobby when I came across it for the first time, almost 43 years ago, and that appealed to me as a kid who did not fit in at school with the Standard Pattern Template. I was (and still am) a dreamer and this whole new way of viewing the world was liberating and carried the sense of something occult. This is not hyperbole, and I know that others have made similar statements. It really was a sense of crossing a barrier into a mirror world of sorts. You saw that the 'mundane' world w

 Well, the Coronation weekend, with it's 3 day holiday has been of great use to me.  I confess that I was somewhat frazzled, having pretty much worked all of April without a break, and stuff had been arriving here, and filling the dining room, my games room, and the kitchen, straining even the normally understanding personality of the memsahib. A pile of figures destined to be re-based, varnished and recruited as fantasy human units were al over what bit of space I had up in the studio. Even the Serenity Flats western display game, was still spread out all over the games room along with 500 Grenadier Miniatures Orcs and 19 units of ECW cavalry - enough was enough! So, Saturday morning I was up bright and early, sticking 300 or so ECW infantry to bases for the memsahib to get stuck into, spraying all the pike for those units and cutting, mounting and lining in, flags for 12 regiments. I also got the Serenity collection stowed away, got the ECW cavalry onto shelves, ordered the Orcs

  The Memsahib and I had just completed the housework yesterday morning and were getting ready for work, when the postie arrived, goaning under the weight of several boxes containing: 400 ECW infantry and skirmish figures 200 Ottomans and fantasy Men Of The East So, the freshly de-cluttered dining room here at the Dark Tower started to fill up again... Then, in the afternoon, a herniated UPS driver delivered 24 kilos of Trolls for the Satanic Panic Kickstarter, which saw the addition of two ornate doorstops for the patio doors, until I can get them all unpacked and sorted And today another 400+ Ottomans arrive I got the skirmish unpacked last night and started on the regiments and dragoons. Finished the rest of the ECW this morning before work and started on the Ottomans. The Trolls are an ornate doorstop at present… I need to get them all sorted as after my painter gets back from the Lake District, (where he's spending a  week to trying to regain his sanity)  he starts on the Orc

LIVE ON KICKSTARTER 28mm Orcs Of The West is the latest project by Satanic Panic Miniatures. Its funding goal is to raise £3,000 by Wednesday, May 31 2023 12:00 PM BST. 20 New Orcs An awesome mangonel with 3 crew 8 new 'Orc' shields 10 brilliant 3D 'Face’ shields http://kck.st/3oYcUnp