Battle Report from the Past...

While doing some digging around I came across this: the first Battle Report that I know of in White Dwarf magazine. At least, the first one in my collection, which goes back to issue #98. This one, titled "24 Hours at Carik Mound", which appeared in issue #107, recounts a 24 hour Warhammer 3rd Edition battle fought by a gaming club that included some GW staff members. Battle Reports become one of the most popular features in White Dwarf. (by issue 140 or so, they become a regular feature) 

I've scanned the article in its entirety below. (Seeing as the article is some 23 years old, I'm hoping GW won't mind all that much).  As you can see, Battle Reports have come a long way in the intervening decades.  At the very least it's an interesting read to see how much things have changed since then.

Miniatures Queue Update

Since I've added the Abandon All Hope blog, I've made some changes to the Miniatures Queue, to reflect the addition of fantasy miniatures that I've added to my task list.

I've split up the Miniatures Queue into subdivisions: 40k, Warhammer, LotR, Battlefleet Gothic, and Space Hulk.  I've left out Epic (for now), because that would truly make things scary.

The queue will probably spike several times in the near future as I get more organized and identify more miniatures I want to paint (and possibly make some ill-advised impulse purchases).

I've removed projects such as terrain projects and other scratchbuilt ideas from the queue.  I do have lots of ideas, but they frequently change.  As the queue is supposed to be a measure of mountain of miniatures I'm trying to reduce, scratchbuilt/terrain projects don't really apply here.

So here's the new queue, as of today:

Warhammer 40k:	185
Lord of the Rings:	147
Warhammer:	80
Space Hulk:	38
Battlefleet Gothic:	3
Total:	453

Inaugurating a new blog

With the release of Warhammer 8th edition today, I thought I would use it for the inaugural date of my new fantasy-dedicated blog, Abandon All Hope (of ever finishing painting all my miniatures). 

The blog will be focused on the fantasy side, and I'll use it to post Warhammer battle reports, progress on the fantasy minis and/or projects I'm working on, and any general articles I decide to write.

We'll see how it goes.  If it ends up tanking, I may just reincorporate it back into this one, despite "Arcadia Prime" having no direct relevance to the fantasy side of things.  Either way, if things are to grow, they have to change over time.  So rather than become stagnant, I'm branching out and trying new things.

Warhammer Blog

As I mentioned in a previous post, with the imminent release of the 8th edition of Warhammer, I'm tempted to get back into the fantasy side of things.

Well, it looks like I'm going to break down and get back into it. Fear not, this does not mean the end of either Arcadia Prime or my interest in the 40k side of things. 

Just thinking about it I have plenty of ideas for posts. Thoughts on the game and how I originally got into it, pictures of my various armies (old and new), progress as I choose/work on new armies, and battle reports (my original raison d'etre) as they happen.

But I'm struggling as to what to name it.

This blog "Arcadia Prime" is named after the planet where my original Imperial Guard regiment was formed, and as the fleet base of my Battlefleet Gothic fleet (er...rather it should be called Battlefleet Arcadia).  For the purposes of the 40k campaigns I've played, my gamer friends and I assume that they take place in the Arcadia Sector. 

But what to call a fantasy blog?  I think it would be cool to have a title that ties it to my 40k blog, but that's not required.  It's easy to come up with a name for something related to 40k.  It's a big galaxy, far too big to define in detail, so all you have to do is carve out a portion of it and call it your own.  Not so easy in the Warhammer World, since it's just a planet, with locales already defined.  Since many of the races are rooted in their various nations. (e.g., High Elves are on Ulthuan, Bretonnians are in Bretonnia, Lizardmen are in Lustria, and so on)  So it's hard to pick a little niche in the Old World and say "here is where all those races are going to get together and duke it out.

At the same time, this blog isn't going to be about a single race.  In my time I've played any number of races, and I'm going to bully Badelaire to do some posts about his army as well, so this won't be restricted by an individual race.

So I think I should avoid a title that's tied to a location or a specific army and keep it more abstract (or at least, more general).

Also, I don't want to keep it so generic as to be "Darkwing's Warhammer Blog".  Lame.

While the 40k Universe is very dark, with a gothic style to it.  So is the Warhammer World, and I want to capture that somewhat in the title.

Badelaire and I bandied a few ideas around yesterday--here's a few of what I can remember, plus others that I thought of since then.

Battles of the Old World   (kinda generic)
Legends of the Old World  (is it arrogant to talk about my own progress blog as "legends"?)

Thinking about my neverending battle against the tides of unpainted miniatures, and considering the sense of impending doom associated with the Warhammer World, I came up with...
Stemming the tide of Darkness
Abandon All Hope of ever finishing painting all my miniatures. 
The Last Stand
Delaying the Inevitable 
Impending Doom


And another random idea:

Fields of Death  (too morbid?)


Any opinions?  Anyone else have any ideas?

Warhammer 8th Edition

Warhammer 8th edition is coming out soon (not that this is news to anyone). It's been a long time since I played it, as the 40k side of things has dominated my gaming for a long time now.  I originally played High Elves and have since played Bretonnians.  Due to getting various boxed sets, I've been amassing quite an Empire force as well, which has so far lay untouched and unpainted.  And I've been eyeing Wood Elves for a while now.  I still have tons of miniatures lying around, waiting to be painted.  Maybe this is just the thing to get me into it again.  (so many games, so little time...)

Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 3rd Edition, was the first GW book I ever bought.  Here's a picture of it below--my copy, not a stock photo.  It has weathered the 23 years rather well.  The binding is start to come apart, but other than that it's in remarkably good shape, considering its age and the amount of use it got.

Some thoughts on the price.  At $74.25 it's not cheap.  On the other hand, I bought the 3rd Edition rulebook in 1987 for $34.95.  Don't ask me how I remember that.  I just do.  It is a 278 page hardcover, not full color but with lots of color pages in it.  I still have it after more than two decades, and I'll still flip through it occasionally to look at the art inside, and just to remember how "things were" back in the old days.  I haven't once regretted spending the money, and this was when I was in the 8th grade.  And yes, I used my own money earned from a job, not by begging my parents for it.  Now the new book is $74.25, just over twice the price (2.12 times).  It's also 528 pages, just under twice the size (1.9 times).  It's also full color, and although I haven't seen it, I can imagine the production values are probably much better.  The price difference being largely offset by the bigger size, it comes to only about a 12% increase in net cost.  Considering inflation over 23 years is a lot more than that (about 92% according to my calculations¹), I'd say that this book is a steal.  So for those who are complaining that the new book is overpriced...well, guess what, it's not.

I'm very tempted to pick up the new book. Will I have the chance to play Warhammer very much, if at all? Probably not. And it's hard to justify spending $75 for nostalgia's sake. On the other hand, it just might get me back into playing Warhammer...  But considering the calculations I just did above, I might have convinced myself that it's more than worth it.

Notes
1. CPI Inflation Calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.

Warhammer Townscape

Twenty-one years ago, back in 1988, GW released "Warhammer Townscape", a collection of thirty-nine card buildings. They were pretty simple, but of decent quality, especially for the day. Back then I assembled some of the simpler buildings, as I didn't want to tackle the more complicated ones. Some of my creations did not survive the years, but many of them did.
Just recently (as in, last week), I decided to tackle the rest of the buildings and construct them. They're just card buildings, so I didn't treat them with the utmost loving care, but assembled them using mostly Scotch tape and some white glue for reinforcement.

In the various boxed editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, GW also released some more card buildings, some on stronger stock, which I've also assembled.

Now I've amassed quite a little town. But it's not limited to Warhammer Fantasy--these can be used in Lord of the Rings games as well as Warhammer 40k, representing a town on a low-tech Imperial world.

In fact, that's where you're going to see them first, in a battle report that will be appearing at some point in the future...

Fantasy Miniatures

Just as a slight diversion from the 40k stuff, here's a selection of the some of the fantasy miniatures I've painted, from Warhammer and the Lord of the Rings.