Cleanliness is next to...

 

Sunday is a travel day for me, so I just had Saturday to put some time into hobbying. And it turned out that what that really turned into was a big ol' tidy. It seems the reason I've not been hobbying is that I'd let the hobby room get into a bit of a state so it wasn't easy to pick up and do a little.

Some of my club mentioned spending 45 minutes each morning doing a little painting, and that's something I might try after I spend the Easter weekend setting up so that's possible. Pictured, by the way, is my new Infinity mat that I picked up from Deep Cut Studios, via Wayland Games. It took a little while to get in, but I got it and a nice carry bag for it that made me do a little happy dance around the room when I put it all away.

I did get a little hobby done, in that I washed a few resin bits and pieces I had lying around. The idea had been to get some of them undercoated once they'd dried, but it was really windy where we live, so that ended up not happening just yet.

Here we have a bit of Rubble City from Fenris Games, and a critter and some scenery from Mammoth Miniatures. The Fenris Games piece I bought to use to put models on for miniature photography, while the Mammoth Games models were bought at a little show as a nice easy project.

Then, the smaller pieces. On the right, a Krakon Games miniature from the same show as the Mammoth Miniatures pieces. On the right, three Guinea Pig Witches from Bad Squiddo Games. As a note, Pathfinder 2nd edition has rules for both a Witch class and an ancestry called Awakened Animal, so they could be a legitimate player character with no homebrewing at all. It's very tempting...

A trip to Chillcon

 

This weekend I went to Chillcon. This is a convention in Sheffield which has been going a few years now. This was, I think, their first attempt at a two day convention. There was a slightly weird arrangement where you couldn't buy a ticket on the day until 11am, when doors for pre-ordered tickets opened at 10am. We somewhat dodged this as we were helping people set up from about 9am.

The show is held in a college, so there's plenty of space and toilets. Due to the nature of the available facilities, the show was spread throughout several rooms over three floors. There were seminars, a board game space, a quiet room, food trucks, a "tuck shop", a painting competition and a whole bunch of vendors. There weren't quite enough food trucks, but otherwise everything seemed quite well organised. I also missed the kit bashing and speed painting competition.

There was a cake shop who I am pretty sure are Cozzmic Cakes. They probably ended up being the people we spent the most money on over the whole weekend. They also had a small game where you could win cupcakes.

My abject failure was not getting any good photos of Four Score Woodwork's stand. He has an assortment of cool gaming accessories, but also stocks Bad Squiddo, TMS brushes and an assortment of small producers' things.

There were a few different demo games going on. I was happy to see Infinity getting shown off, and it seemed like the table was usually busy when I went past.

There was also a great demo table for the latest edition of Warmachine. Their core mechanics haven't changed all that much, it seems, and there's a good range of 3D prints and plastics coming out. I won't have the time to actually play this, but I remember getting a demo of an earlier edition back at Grumpy Old Wargames Con at Wayland many, many years ago, so I do want to see it succeed.

A new discovery for me was Greyhawk Miniatures. They're producing an assortment of fantasy miniatures at the moment, in both 28mm and 54mm scale. The ones that stood out to me most was an assortment of anthropmorphic fantasy medieval figures.

One of the things that stood out to me was that the sculptor hasn't just scaled a sculpt up and down to make the two variants. Once sculpted, he's altered the details to better suit the scale so that they don't look out of place, or have problems taking paint. This is a great sign of someone who really understands what they're doing. Definitely one to watch in the future!

Something that jumped out at me as I wandered past was Brickskrieg. A simple wargame using legally distinct building bricks compatible with Lego, it's very different to anything else I saw this weekend.

Finally, this lovely gaming table by Natural Twenty Tables really jumped out at me. Definitely one for when we've decided where too settle down. They seem to be doing all the sensible things folk have come up with over the years for a proper grown up gaming table.

It was definitely a Big Day. We got in, ordered a big bag of Chinese take out, and nearly dozed off watching home renovation shows. Sunday has been a restful, slow day to recover. I don't think I'd survive a two day event without a day off to recover these days. But generally, the vibes of the whole event were excellent and definitely one we'll be looking to go back to.

Blowing dust off the blog

 

Oh, it's, um, been a while since I posted here, isn't it?

So, it turns out I rather over-committed myself in February. As a result, I ended up either not doing very much blog-worthy, or simply not having the time to write it up.

I went to the "World Premiere" of a new set for the card game Flesh and Blood that I've been getting more into. It was excellent fun but I think I played more than 40 games of cards over the course of a long weekend. I definitely needed some time to recover after that.

I've played a couple of games of Infinity - one in person and one on TTS. I have another TTS game in the coming week for my club's current campaign. Meanwhile, assembling and painting models has taken a back seat while I do other things. I'll get back to it, but we're not quite there yet.

All in all, I'm not unhappy with how February and the first part of March went, but I wouldn't want to get that busy too often! I definitely needed a break after all the fun things.