Dungeons & Dandies

 It's been a little hectic here this week, as the memsahib is quite the ill lady and is in the hospital, facing the rigours of NHS contracted catering for a while. In the meantime, I amd juggling running the house, meeting the needs of 6 Scottish Terriers (well, 5 and a Westie) and keeping on top of my workload.

This morning however, I popped some decals on 90 Orcs and got the alkyd washes on the Tabletop World Wizards Tower. I sold my original one, but given that I have all I need for historical gaming and given that I have drawn a line under the historical collecting, once and for all, I thought it might be fun to re-imagine the tower with a few changes inspired by the first one I did and by watching a program on TV as I ate a lonely supper the other night. ( ham and mustard on sourdough, and the show was Great British Railway Journeys).

Anyway, Fantasy is very much at the fore now as I have denied myself the pleasure for too long. A couple of my friends keep saying they are not fantasy gamers, but to hell with them. This is for me. Selfish I know, but by far the best games I ever played were fantasy games, several in particular between the ages of 15 and 17 still remain fresh in my mind at nearly 55.

I've been reviewing what I want from a fantasy game, and I have to say that first and foremost it's obviously fun. 

Balanced play is not important, but dynamic looking games, with little or no gunpowder are essential. I do want to get away from the 'army book' format of gaming. To me you have Good, Evil and 'Mercenary Bastards Who Would Sell Their Own Mother'.

So whilst my Evil army is based around a solid core of almost 600 Orcs, it will have Goblins, Eastern Goblins, Demons, Undead, Lizardmen, the obligatory Men Of The East, Dragons and frankly, anything else I feel like adding.

On the flipside, the forces of Good will be Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Centaurs (proper ones too, not those Chaotic GW monstrosities) and again, anythinbg I feel will give a good looking a fun game.

I've been tinkering with the fast play rules I knocked together and I feel that they will allow for big, outrageous games, with no casualty removal and lots of strategy due to the 'I Think Not' system which allows players to thwart each other using a pool of ITN counters.

I'm trying to curb my expenditure for a few months as I have a massive backlog of basing (700+ figures) and have a massive painting backlog with my painter of around 1200 more models. I think I'll end up with 2500-3000 28mm fantasy figures within 12 months. 

I did however, treat myself to 100 Copplestone Castings Halflings and 72 Ral Partha Goblin-Imp Wolf Riders after RPE kindly dug the moulds out of their archives for me the other day. 

I'll be using a few of my own models too, probably 150 Great Goblins and 100 Lesser Goblins, and I have to get some of the Goblin Guards which Alternative Armies now produce but which were originally by Reider Design. For Centaurs I shall go with the two classic sculpts from Essex Miniatures because they are just that - classics.

I envisage seiges, large rolling battles taking months and a general air of 'fuck it, lets play with toy soldiers'. I am very much self-reliant in my gaming plans now, too. 

Friends cannot be relied upon and I think several of my friends are finally heading the direction of becoming golfers rather than gamers, as they feign a lack of interest, brought about in my opinion by the dreaded gaming malaise, that state when they can't be bothered to game, or because they are not allowed out on their own for a few harmles hours of dice rolling - Poor bastards! 

If it got like  that for me, I'd stop all pretence, swallow my pride and just sell up. After all, when you've gamed for 80% of your life, it's not going to be difficult to walk away is it?

It's like figure collectors. Ostensibly they were once gamers, but now they collect and catalogue the figures, placing a value on them far beyond their actual worth (I nearly got sucked into that), sitting on sometimes tons of lead, painting a handful every year and opretending that they can't die whilst they have unpainted lead.

Well ladies, yes you can and probably will die with the majority of your lead unpainted, and worst of all, unplayed with.

These are toys for Gygax's sake!

  PLAY WITH THE FUCKING THINGS!

The only thing worse id the person who constantly brags they have 10000 Napoleonics, all painted by Peter Gilder, but who keep them tucked away in boxes because they don't have enough space to use them and besides can't be bothered because they are socially dysfuntional - well. more dysfunctional than the majority of gamers who, let's face it are pretty weird.

Speaking of dysfunctional, I am waiting for my copy of Dandy In The Underworld, the autobiography of the late Sebastian Horsley, a true Bohemian, decadent, libertine extraordinary and an heir of the Tate & Lyle fortune.

I always enjoyed reading interviews with him, but never got around to the autobiography. Now the time has come...

 

 
 
And now, if you will excuse me, I fear it is time to go and lie down in a darkened gaming room for a while...
 
TTFN




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