What I've been up to in September

 

My September has mostly been taken up with LARPing, so I don't have a huge amount to report right now. I did buy a couple of painted figures cheaply on eBay which have now arrived.

These are kit bashes by Ricki on BlueSky. I put in some low bids and was lucky enough to win them. I've grabbed them to use as antagonists in RPGs, so they'll be packed away for a bit until I have an in person campaign.

I had another game of Infinity down at Dice Cup. We're trying to have regular Nottingham meet ups every first Sunday, so if you're into Infinity and in the area, please do get in touch and pop down.

I wanted to get some bases for the Fenris KoFi models, so ordered some cobblestone bases from, unsurprisingly, Fenris Games.

As I was already ordering something, I also picked up another couple of bits. First were these resin Rubble City barricades. They're lovely, detailed resin casts. The large stakes mean that they're probably an "at home" only bit of terrain as they're quite challenging to transport, but I still love them.

There was also this lovely dwarf hero going, and I like a nice dwarf miniature. He'll go into the "to do" pile for now, as I need to finish painting a few more things before I assemble anything new.

Infinity Battle Report: Uplink Centre, Combined Army vs Shock Army

 

A few players in the Midlands have decided to try and organise a regular Infinity game day at the Dice Cup in Nottingham. We're running on the first Sunday of the month, and our first attempt at this was back at the start of August. If you're local, please get in touch via the UK Infinity Discord, or let me know you'd like to show up and I'll get you in touch with people.

I brought along a first pass at a vanilla Combined Army list, while my opponent brought his Shock Army of Acontecimento. For a mission, we were running Crossing Lines. This mission has an unusual set up, in that you have a second deployment zone - a narrow strip of the board next to the centre line on your opponent's half of the table - meaning that they will also be deploying troops in your table half!

The big experiment for me was trying out the Vector Operator sniper, which I have heard good things about. I haven't assembled my Vector model yet, so the out of production Skiavoros was serving in its stead. Sadly, on its very first order of the game it rolled badly, took a couple of hits and died immediately. Bother.

My opponent, meanwhile, was running a Tikbalang, which did a very good job of whittling down pieces I hadn't been able to deploy defensively enough. I certainly caused a lot of problems, but took more casualties than I'd want on a first turn.

In particular, I lost a lot of the pieces I'd deployed in the centre, meaning I had to scrabble to get models into position to make sure I could score.

My Anathematic managed to neutralise Scylla, giving me hacking supremacy for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the strong firepower my opponent still had was able to move defensively to keep the Anathematic at arm's length, as my order pool was slowly depleted.

A well timed Akali Commando proceeded to roll up my right flank, and cleared several order generating pieces on the flank furthest from the Anathematic.

In the end my opponent was able to leave me without enough models to swing back effectively, keeping the high scoring pieces well away from the Anathematic. The score ended up around 7-2 to the Shock Army from memory.

All in all, I felt like I learned a lot from the game. The Anathematic was a monster and rightly terrifying, but the Vector needed to use smoke more often and be very cagey about its shooting to compensate for its incredible fragility. Beyond that, I probably deployed too aggressively for Crossing Lines and need to think a bit more about the sort of units that should go in the central deployment zone. I'm already drafting updated lists for the next Infinity game day.

Two Weeks of Hobby: Infinity game, Bootleg BOYL and PeachCon

After a bit of a hiatus, I had a busy couple of hobby weeks so I'm summing up the previous two weeks, rather than one. There will be longer posts about all these things, but for now here's a few short summaries to let folk know what I've been up to.

The weekend before last, some folks decided to arrange an day of Infinity games at Dice Cup. I got a game in, but in future it should be possible to get a couple of games in. I'm moving onto running vanilla Combined Army for a while, so ran a first pass at a list to start shaking out what I agree with and what I don't.

 

Bring Out Your Lead has been a bit of a UK institution for Oldhammer, but it was sadly cancelled this year. War Dollies Collective and Lead and Steel combined forces to host "Bootleg BOYL" in Nottingham. It was a fun day out with an assortment of vendors, folk playing old games and participation games in which I partook.

Sunday was PeachCon 2026. This is a small convention organised by Chris Peach of Peachy Tips. It's a mix of vendors and demo games. I'd planned to do a bunch of demos but got to chatting with folks and before I knew it the show was over. I am sometimes not a smart man.

I now have nothing much planned for the next few weeks. Obviously, I'll write up all these things for the blog. I'm hoping to get the hobby room sorted out sooner rather than later, and get back to clearing things out on eBay. I'll report back next week on how that's going...

A quick July summary

My real life recently got a teensy bit busy, so I've been away from the blog, but I have still been up to a few hobby things. 

 

First up, with Bad Squiddo Games setting up a new shipping and fulfilment solution, Annie has been having a bit of a clear out of bits and pieces before the move. I picked up a whole bunch of Renedra scenery pieces to use in photo backdrops and as RPG scenery.

On the Infinity side of things "Operation Mazebreaker" came out. This new starter set has a bunch of new miniatures for Corregidor, one of my earliest factions.

I'm very keen to get back to the Nomads, but there's a lot of hobby work to be done to get there - so currently the plan is to get my vanilla Combined Army playing a bit more, and once the core of that is painted, I'll move onto my Nomad paint schemes.

I also ordered the Ciaphas Cain miniature for my Imperial Guard. I have enjoyed the books I've read and I wanted to grab him before he went out of stock and became hard to find.

I went on a little adventure to Warp Miniatures shop in Nottingham on a free weekend. I have a little more to say on that, but it deserves its own post.

And finally, I did assemble this Minotaur by Archon Studios. There is a small mistake I made with the assembly - on the very final instruction, I didn't line the parts up correctly, and there's a small gap. I'll need to fill this in with Green Stuff, but it's really annoyed me as it's such a small thing that's really standing out to me.

The kit itself is great - it's single pose but very cleverly put together to hide an awful lot of the joins under other parts, making it really easy to assemble.

A few delightful packages

 

While I couldn't get to UK Games Expo, a friend was going, and they kindly picked up a couple of bits and pieces for me. The main one is the event exclusive Miranda Ashcroft for Infinity, who I have been dying to get since we saw the preview of her.

Also picked up are a couple of preview miniatures from Duncan's new wargame venture, and the Games Workshop AoS event miniature - sadly the 40K ones had gone a little too fast once I heard they were there and contacted my friend.

But a huge thanks to my secret shopper, and I look forward to getting these sorted.

Fenris Games runs a small Ko-Fi project each year with varying levels, and this year the reward were some slightly fishy villagers. These should be a fun little project.

Ian was also kind enough to include these duck people stickers because he knows I'm a huge sucker for ducks. You may have guessed from this that he's a big Runequest fan...

Finally, I noticed that I had forgotten to pay postage on a Kickstarter from last year, and sure enough, once I paid up, this delightful book showed up a few days later. Beyond the Pale is an RPG inspired by Jewish history and folk lore. I've had a flick through and it looks great. I'm looking forward to settling down and having a deep read soon.

Lead and Steel 2026 - Acquisitions

So, what did I get at Lead and Steel? A late addition to the show was Four A miniatures, and I picked up a few adventurers, some weird little critters and a cloud of faces that will make an excellent monster.

The goodie bag had a whole ton of stuff from an assortment of manufacturers. For a free show, this is a whole ton of stuff!

The organiser also gave me a couple of other free bits and pieces as we were about to finish, so I’ve also got a drunken master monk and some orcs. Despite having a criminal number of goblins I am very short on orcs for RPG purposes.

Due to the pick and mix results (below) I ended up splashing out on an old Citadel Bretonnian cannon to use as a Border Princes Bombard.

I also picked up an Advanced Fighting Fantasy book to relive my childhood and a pre-coloured ALEPH shipping container- I think by Antenocitis Workshop originally?

And finally, the results of the Pick n Mix for charity. For £10, I got the Bombard and crew, then four cool minis I can paint up to add to D&D warbands and such like.

This is a bit more than I intended to get, but it’s fine. I can just be more restrained at Salute tomorrow, right?

Infinity Game: White Company vs Next Wave - Superiority

 

As previously mentioned, after Christmas I managed to get in a game of Infinity at War Dollies Collective. My opponent is pretty new to Infinity, so we picked the Direct Action mission Superiority. I dug out my White Company because they're the prettiest models I have and I wanted to show off.

I ended up going second. My opponent was on Next Wave, so I hid my expensive pieces but left out a couple of defensive pieces like a Sierra Dronbot.

My opponent managed to score a console so I sent up a Peacemaker's peripheral to try and my way. While I managed to clear a mine and wound a Tekdraken, but wasn't able to capitalise on it. I realised at the end of the turn I'd simply not pushed up far enough and my opponent scored points for controlling more quadrants.

I sent the Beasthunter after Patroclus (played here by the WarCor model) and the Raindancer fireteam. Patroclus refused to die and the Beasthunter was swiftly dispatched.

On the right flank, I wasn't confident of clearing the Juggernaut, so I sent the Kunai Ninja to hold it up, and block it's ability to shoot models I needed to advance. I pushed my Nisse / Jujak fireteam up but was only managed to draw the quadrant scoring.

Third round, and Next Wave went on a big push and did a whole bunch of smushing White Company Troopers. I managed to throw smoke to cover an approach for Shona to hit the Juggernaut. My opponent got a quick lesson in "why you never get too close to Shona" as in one swing she forced seven armour saves, and took the Juggernaut off the table.

I managed to push my Jujaks up the table, having cleared an Ironside, and the engineer managed to push a button for a console. In the end, my Key Ops controlled a zone, but Next Wave controlled the other three, winning the game for my opponent with a score of 6-3.

All in all, it was good to get back to a game of Infinity. I did spend way too much time forgetting to focus on scoring objectives, but we both had a lot of fun. White Company are still a "sometimes" faction for me, but it was good to get them out for a little run.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

Christmas and New Year Hobby

I have been pottering on with assembling the Halfling Blood Bowl team. I'd hoped to be a little further along than this, but an assortment of non hobby activities took up a bunch of time. Still, excellent human interaction and resting occurred. 

 

Games Workshop sent me their annual £10 voucher, and I used it towards buying some online only Halfling Star Players. I've also put some money from my eBay sales into picking up the new rulebook and a couple of Treemen (alongside a mat for Infinity), which should show up next month.

The space between Christmas and the New Year also had a meeting of what is intended to be a new gaming club: The War Dollies Collective. The hope is that this will turn into regular club nights, but at the moment these aren't finalised.

There were a wide range of activities on offer. There was a large kit-bashing area for folks to build whatever they fancied. There were also participation games - both some kind of car combat game and a small scale Napoleonic historical game.

I took advantage of the day to arrange a game of Infinity with one of the people I gave a demo to at Dice Cup earlier this year. We had an excellent 300 point game, with me taking White Company and my opponent Next Wave, playing a Direct Action mission.

The arrival of over 300 miniatures from Wildspire Miniatures has also taken up a chunk of time. These models were originally designed by Blacklist Miniatures, who then ended up being incapable of delivering. Wildspire purchased the moulds and produced these models, offering original backers a significant discount to acquire the miniatures. There's still a Horror set that Blacklist failed to deliver that Wildspire has purchased and not produced yet.

So, it has still been a very busy couple of weeks from a hobby perspective. The coming month has some LARP, some card games and some work travel which won't produce interesting things for the blog. Still, I have a few stories to tell about my Infinity game and the Wildspire minis that I'll tell in a short while.