A long expected announcement

It’s time to try and earn through vocation. If I’m truly honest with myself I think I’ve known that I should have done it for some time now, but I’ve been too scared and the past few years have been bumpy.

I don’t have kids, plus both the hand I’ve been dealt and the way in which I’ve played it has meant that I don’t have a house to pay for. I have been too wrapped up in keeping up with the Joneses that I haven’t seen the situation for what it actually is: the perfect opportunity to do something different. Something I want to do, as opposed to something I have to in order to pay for stuff to distract me from the realisation that the life I have isn’t the one I want, or even working toward the one I want.

A lot of ground work will be needed over the coming months before anything actually happens. The road ahead is long and difficult, but the destination is clear.

So that’s why a few months ago I changed jobs, and went down to a part time position that will pay just enough to keep the wolf from the door, so that the extra time on my hands I can use to do what I want.

If you’ll join me, I want to invite you all on the journey that will hopefully culminate in an amended vision for The Halfling’s Rest, the boardgame store that never was.

Coming 2022

Yes, Henry Cavill plays Warhammer. Get over it.

I must have seen well over a hundred times (zero hyperbole) something pop up on various sites and groups I’m in on socials about that interview Cavill gave on the Graham Norton show last week.

Ugh. Enough already.

That’s right. Double Facepalm Worthy.

Strap in bumcracks, it’s time for another episode of Samplains

FLGS Tour: Fazpack

A little while back I did a short review of a Lancaster based FLGS, and today I look a little closer to home with a look at Blackpool based Fazpack

Is it any good?

Five Parsecs From Home: A Flickthrough Review

They said it was going to be an easy job. Just get in, grab the goods and get back out. Yeah right. Those are Black Dragon mercs up ahead. Time to earn your pay. Just another day out among the stars!

Five Parsecs From Home was suggested to me through the magic algorithms of the internets, it bills itself as a Solo Adventure Wargame which was something I was particularly interested in given how much “solo gaming time” had been forced on us over the last two years. A number of games had put out (or farted out, dependant on quality) solo versions of games to keep players happy and entertained during the these trying and scary times. This game has been designed from the ground up to be a solo game however, and if nothing else I wanted to see what on Earth that meant.

In memoriam of those hobby stores closed, and hobbyists lost

Another bit of sad tabletop hobby news has reached my ears a few weeks ago, that of the decision of Secret Weapon Miniatures to close. This got me thinking of those places and people sadly no longer with us. Scant weeks go by now between news of the demise of another company or passing of another great.

No Time to Die: A Review

After 18 months of setbacks and false starts, Bond finally managed to return to the cinema, and wow that was a long film.

Stargrave Quarantine 37: a flickthrough review

When it was commissioned, Imperial Research Station 37 was home to nearly 10,000 scientists and researchers working on a vast array of biological and chemical projects. Then, six months before the outbreak of the war, Station 37 went dark. No escape pods were launched and all attempts at communication went unanswered. Only a solitary, repeating broadcast filled the silence: “This station is under quarantine – do not approach”. When the war came, the station was forgotten, left to drift lifelessly in its empty system. Now, in the aftermath of the Last War, Station 37 has been rediscovered and its broadcast heard once more…

Quarantine 37 is the first expansion to the Stargrave skirmish game in which your crew risk their lives for riches unfathomable in an abandoned research station. Do they make it out to tell the tale of what happened there, or do they succumb to the secrets buried deep in Imperial Research Station 37?

Spoilers: plague zombies

Once more unto the X Wing breach.

So in a few weeks I’m going to be going with a few others to an Xwing Comp in Preston, because lord knows that we don’t get any here in Blackpool. Before Covid (in a time period that I’m almost certain historians will refer to as “B.C”) we were going to go to a store comp “dahn saahf” in teams of three, so my team consisting of my Bro, a nice chap called Tony and myself, wanted to get tshirts for the occasion. Then covid hit. and everything flew out of the window.

However

Ere we go

We got wind of a comp locally and we couldn’t resist, so I farted out the above logo for our team and we’re apparently actually going.

So I’m going to be using my standard second edition fun list called “Welcome to Rogue Squadron” which consists of 3 E Wings. How will I fare? Oh, almost certainly badly.

I’ll post after the comp and tell you all how I did.

With their latest IP guidelines, Games Workshop have gone quite mad

I’m covering this about four weeks too late I know, but I’ve had a number of people asking me my opinion via the usual channels on the dumpster fire du jour that is Geedubbs’ latest edict. (spoilers – the company needs to die already and y’all should move onto better systems with companies that don’t price gouge or tear chunks out of the hobby that they think will be extra revenue streams for them, because ultimately they got too big and their core product isn’t selling as well as they’d like everyone -especially their investors- to believe)

That’s it. That’s basically the blog

Off on a FLGS tour: Lancaster Board and Sword.

As some of you may know two years ago I was poised to take over a board game store in little sunny Blackpool. Unfortunately one thing led to another and I was unable to, and then the pandemic hit anyway*. However something I did do on the run up to (not) taking on the store was go on what I called a “FLGS world tour” of the alternatives to what I was taking on. Because any good no adequate hmm, not shite businessman would at the very least want to take an objective look at what they were offering and where they stood in the local area, as opposed to just firmly sticking your head in the sand whilst screaming that you’re the best while all available data points in a wholly different direction.

A specialist hobby shop like a boardgame store is something people are willing to travel to. Typically about an hour in the UK. Now this gives us an area to work with. Armed thusly and with a miniscule amount of googlefu, myself, Kib and Logan came up with about half a dozen places to go and visit.

Enter the Lancaster based Board and Sword (FB here)