The Liebster Award

I've never been one for these chain letter type awards that go around a couple times a year, but they do  often turn up a good blog I have never seen before. Since I was given this from my favorite blog from down under (NZ not AUS)  That'd be the humbly named  Scott's War-Gaming. I would be sorely remiss if I did not reciprocate.  Scott and I despite living worlds apart have near identical interests..and from what I read, I am sure he and I would game regularly if we lived in any kind of proximity to each other. 

The timing here is good, while this year is low point in blogging for me, I havent really been following the gaming scene in the last couple years and my project output had been minimal due other interests, work and my kids taking up more and more of my time. As a result I just don't find the time I had 5 or so years ago to work large armies etc...(I am struggling to get one Ancients Army painted) I find myself painting random fantasy pieces..(as I enjoy the painting) and playing Lord of the Rings...skirmish games are where its at for me these days, with LotR SBG being Rebranded the Hobbit SBG..and playing in all 3 LotR events at Adepticon this year...this will most likely be a Lord of the Rings Blog for the next 6 months. We've still got our Ancients Campaign happening, and I look forward to trying out some Bolt Action when I get a chance, Like anyone as time goes on my Hobbies and direction change. Anyway I guess what I am trying to say is, while the games might change the Hobbies still there for me..so while its been a slow year..I expect to be picking things up bit really soon.

As for the Liebster Award, thanks for the nomination Scott, and I'll reciprocate to some fellow bloggers some who I know quite well and whose own blogs may have fallen off like mine but could come back at anytime, with any and all things gaming related, and they'll be good.

As part of receiving this award I am to pass this on to five other bloggers, (I'll list the criteria at end)
whose blogs I enjoy......(no particular order)

#1 Cursed Treasures-  My pal Tim out of Phoenix, Az. Tim was the author of the Legends of the High Seas book for Warhammer Historical and I met him thru Adepticon and my fandom of the game. Tim is righteous dude and we share similar interests in gaming from Pirates, LotR to WW2 gaming . Tim
is a great painter and gets into some other genres I've only been able to muse about like Old West and Pulp Gaming.

#2. Little Green Monsters  is my friend Aarons blog, Aaron is one of  our club night regulars and could be sculpting professionally if he wanted to and it paid the bills...he is a green stuff master, and while is output is sporadic his sculpting and conversion work on various WFB models is very well known around the scene here and worth a look. He's also has several bad ass FoW armies winning best appearance for his  early Soviet Army at last years Adepticon.

#3 Fist Full of Seamen. Ive spoken to this fellow on the Lead Adventure forum a couple times about our shared love of Pirate Ships. My friend here ( whose name is escaping me)  is the master, period of 28mm Pirate Ship building and converting. His gigantic fleet of ships is awe inspiring. (please go thru his archives to see all his ships.) He runs massive games on giant tables at these unknown Pirate events, that I have never heard off, that lie out the realm of GW organized gaming, and in the straight up Historical gaming camp.  I was invited to one of these events in Kansas City but could not attend, the blog lists the author as being in Wyoming, so I am not sure where the fellow actually is but like a good pirate he keeps his location well guarded.

#4 Belched from the Depths - if you're into old fantasy miniatures, like I am and have been collecting them for 35 years..then you will want to check out "Spooktalker"'s blog. Like me he apparently has lots of what I have sitting around in dusty boxes from a lifetime of collecting, but his stuff is all masterfully converted and painted. Probably one of my top five painters on the Lead Adventure forum (which is saying alot) and he wasnt even in last years Lead Painters League. Give it look , especially if you are into retro D&D, OSR gaming, you will be pleased.

#5. Chicago Terrain Factory- This is Rich's blog which has been around longer than mine. Rich has been the anchor of the Club since it moved into my basement.  Rich is also the guy that got me into Hirst Arts building. His Historical Armies are just great and have grown seeming exponentially over the last 3 years of so...He only works on Historicals these days and it shows...check out his awesome Arab Army, and he's getting fully painted units of alot of the new releases coming out (fireforge, etc) regularly. When he Chris get a chance to play in our current campaign with awesome fully painted Armies...I'll be there to take the pictures. Check out Chicago Terrain Factory for archives going back further than mine or info on his yearly (And now always sold out, Hirst Arts seminar at Adepticon)

Lastly here is the criteria for my nominees should you choose to partake

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it you.

2. Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.

3. Sit back and bask in the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing you have made someones day!

4. There is no obligation to pass this onto someone else but its nice if you take the time to do so.



I'll be back shortly with our Antiquity Campaigns Round 2 Map and the unboxing for the new LotR release, (err. Hobbit Release!) Escape from Goblin Town.

Milestones

I dont think I have posted one of these self congratulatory posts before, If I have humor me. But the blog broke the quarter million visitors mark last night. I started tracking this via site meter sometime in 2008...so roughly 3 and half years. My page views are almost exactly double that. So it pleases me to say that people that stop by here, usually find something else they want to look at as well. I know this is small potatoes in the real world of "internet hits" but Like a an old car, I just keep on chugging along doing my thing. I know I have lost some readers with my recent general anti-GW stance, and criticism at the more popular "hobby blogs" not really being good for the "hobby" at all. (BoLS was my biggest traffic supplier). but I have also gained some new ones because of that and with my coverage of other games, so all in its wash.

I will remain ad free here (my personal relationship with Cipher Games aside) as I don't do this for "hits". It really just about communicating with the like minded about our "hobby". I have busy couple months coming up with both my personal life and my Hobby life, and plan on knocking some great stuff before year end. I'd figure I'd start August with about as positive a post as I can muster this morning. So if your reading this, thanks! for sticking with me, I promise to keep the commentary "sharp" and the hobby output as heavy as I can manage.

I'll close with brief plug for Adepticon 2012, next year is its 10th Anniversary and like many of us it continues to grow and branch out of the "GW only" mindset to become the best wargaming hobby convention in the US. Expanding to 4 days this year. Look for a variety of all kinds of new games being featured. and If you are so inclined. please join me in my second Legends of the High Seas event!. Registration goes online this fall, so keep your eye on the site or just keep on stopping by here.

The Real Housewives of 40K.

I'm not sure if you are all unfortunately familiar with it, but one of the many scourges of piece of garbage television culture here in the US, is a series of programs on the Bravo channel called "the real housewives" of "blank (insert city here). The program concerns itself with a bunch of whining, spoiled, vapid, fake, almost universally moronic and always cruel women, who with their emasculated husbands (or boyfriends) parade around fighting with each other having pissing contests over things like who has the better boob job or who can spend the most money in an afternoon. Its the worst kind of mind rotting trash imaginable, akin to nothing but watching people argue for a hour. Unfortunately, women love it. I know some very Intelligent women who shockingly love it. They say its like watching a trainwreck, they see parts of many of their friends in these shameless shrews, and the weekly trainwreck provides them with endless entertainment. Until today I thought I had grossly overestimated the intelligence of some women I know, but then today I read this article on Bell of Lost Souls.

I've railed against Ard Boyz's before and what worthless pile of dung it is, an antithesis to the wargaming hobby, and something no one I would spend 5 mins talking to would ever play in more than once. (Hey- we all make mistakes right?) This article is about a recent Ard Boyz event, taking place in only what I can assume is Texas, and pretty much says it all,- zero hobby, cheating, physical intimidation, all over toy soldiers. This is what much of the 40k tournament scene has become stereotyped as, a bunch of "real housewives" a bunch of knuckleheads, who ought just go throw dice against the wall for money than bother with the wargaming hobby. While I know not "all" 40K events and players are like this, it is a real subsection of hobby that puts an embarrassing stain over the the rest of it just like steroids in Baseball. My greater point here isnt "how bad Ard Boyz sucks" but how places like Bell of Lost Souls perpetuate this behavior, and are these aggregator type blogs, even good for the hobby?

Let me say now that as much as this looks like one, it is not a shot at the guys who started BoLS, who did so surely with the best intentions, while I know neither personally more than in passing at Adepticon or a few emails. I do know they are passionate hobbyists with love of their game and their gaming community. As we all know sometimes the best intentions go astray, outside themselves and with the exception of a few smarter guys that have moved on, the writers are bloody awful, the articles, overall terrible and immature. Most of the "breaking news" is usually days old, recycled from other blogs. Other games are mentioned in passing, but we all know its primarily a 40k blog and The 40k articles generally promote, ultra competitive, Ard Boyz style play and hence its behavior. The kids are clearly minding the store and the whole thing at least to me looks like one big episode of "Real Housewives", not just the regular Episode but one of the special reunion ones, where people sit across from each and argue and scream at the top of their lungs for two hours.

The problem I have is two fold, One- like the trainwreck of said show, I can't help myself from reading it and now I understand where these women I know that watch this garbage are coming from. Two- on a more personal level is a matter of public perception. I see BoLS lack of self policing really just damaging to the overall perception of hobby because it indirectly hurts noble efforts like Heroes of Armageddon ( in which hobbyist built and donated 4 awesome armies for doctors without borders, raising over $30,000.00) While I am not sure there is even any cross pollination between the HoA team and the BoLS community the association is there, because of the blog and the HoA logo plastered all over it. So when you read some of these insane articles about the 40K hobby like I've mentioned. That is just frankly bad for business. Thankfully HoA has come and gone, but the greater point remains. Whether you like it or not Bell of Lost Souls has become somewhat of gatekeeper to the hobby, and when the gatekeeper, looks like the "crypt keeper", your going to scare away just as many people as you bring in.

I would not presume to tell the guys at BoLS what to do, or how to clean up their act. That simply isnt my place, I am one guy with a blog and an opinion, and these days they need to change the old adage from " opinions are like a-holes" to "blogs and opinions are like a-holes". This is just whats on my mind today. I'm not afraid of self analysis, I know I have easily become one of those old grognards who will inevitably will fit in better at Historicon than Adepticon I am sure sooner than later and thats ok, I am also aware its possible, maybe I just dont get it?.

My only bit of wisdom would be to point out that blogs are different than forums, and the shenanigans that go on at certain forums have there place where the public face of a news aggregator doesn't. Just like certain blogs with a narrower focus, are far less offensive, despite objectionable content, because they are not "gatekeepers" or don't try to put everything in one bucket or be anything more than what they are.

So unlike the "Real Housewives" trainwreck the women in my life just cant stop watching, I can't just drop Bravo from my cable channel, but I certainly can disassociate myself from the BoLS alliance and its place in my blog roll so I dont have to watch the trainwreck. In fact I am retooling the overall coverage of the blog anyway to be non-GW, removing the majority of the GW only and 40K blogs, with exception of "hobby only" powerhouses, like Dave Taylors blog, From the Warp and Santa Cruz Warhammer., because despite the traffic I did get from BolS, I have pretty good idea of who reads this blog and who doesn't.

Blog Wrangling

I just went through the surprisingly time consuming process of sorting my blogroll by category. I found I was missing way too many interesting posts the way I had it set up, I've limited each category to the current 5, that way if your interested in a particular category you'll see the most recent posts in each. I've dropped the Chicago Terrain Factory feed, (Thanks Rich, its served me well for over 3 years!) in favor of this set up as I figure with the individual categories, posts wont roll over as quickly so you'll get a better chance to see then if they were in a generic pile. I did prune some inactive blogs or blogs with dead links, so if you were listed and are not now, please email you blog's addy and what your general area of interest is. If I have you listed and your category changed please mention that as well. If your new blogger or old blogger I just missed and want to be list here, again just shoot me an email. Keep on blogging guys.