My heart belongs to the Black Hole

1987. I go to high school. Simon Bisley draws the above image and sends it to 2000ad. He's a self taught illustrator who's done an album cover or two.

Oldhammer and it's attitude to work!

Oldhammer doesn't work

A gentleman wrote an article on BOLS. In this article he tells us all about his opinion of Oldhammer. Read it. Go on. I dare you. 

Ok, I'll do a TL:DR version of it for you.

Oldhammer is boring cos you'll never get any new toys. Oldhammmer is dull cos your army will never be the newest one with the newest codex. Oldhammmer is a dead end because you'll never be able to find a stranger to beat in an FLGS. And most importantly of all....the author has done fuck all research, listened to something his mate has said, jumped to a conclusion and gone running with it to write an article of spurious content.

Now of course, this being a free world he has every right to air his opinion and I will fight your 3rd Edition Orc army to the death to defend his right told do so. This article and the comments following it and indeed the conversation on the Oldhammer Facebook page do bring up some interesting points.

Confrontation from around the web

You may have noticed that myself and some of the other Wipsters (yes it's a thing! Click on the badge over to the right and see where it takes you!) are a bit obsessed with GW's infamously abandoned game, Confrontation. I've no idea why we keep coming back to it but we do. It's probably the heady mix of rare figures, rose tinted spectacles and self flagellation that makes want to try to use a system that is ostensibly too complicated for its own good but we see it as a root. From this spiky little tuber grows so many things that we loved and continue to love about the 40k universe. It grew into Necromunda and Inquisitor. It shaped hive worlds and gangs and allowed a move away from playing space marines and bigger and bigger battles. It was the first real delve into the reality that everyday humans had to survive within the imperium of man. It was designed so beautifully by so many of the legendary names with the golden age of GW, Jes Goodwin and John Blanche contributing sketches and designs and guiding the style of the game that captured our young imaginations.

Hernandez the navigator

The wonderful Oldhammer forum continues to blurt great little projects for folks to join in with and I've managed to get a figure painted for the latest one just before the deadline.

Full Tilt and the Battle of the Kings Tree

The offending pamphlet

Many moons ago (and many moons after I'd abandoned mini's for other teenage pursuits) a free game was published in the GeeDub's house publication. Based on the medieval knightly tournaments it pits noble bretonians against each other in the most noble of sports. Jousting!

So a couple of decades later, in Erny's kitchen the OGRE's decided to give it ago as part of a days knightly pursuits.

Sir Erny of Roamershire (in red) prepared to defend the honour of all of Bretonnia against the dastardly Count Johan von Poomfickel, an upstart imperial knight who had little idea of the meaning of chivalry.

The combatants prepare for the first pass

Here come the warm jets

Taking Tiger Mountain by strategy

Spurred on by rampant miniature envy when Axiom actually painted one of the Marauder Psyker Gang figures I dragged the brushes out slapped the pigment on two of the gang.

Orcmember

Fnar Fnar! I missed orctober again but I have managed to complete an Orc regiment just over a week late. You may recognise these sneaky pigstickers as Harboths Orc Archers, one of the classic old school regiment box sets.