Christmas is about friends, family, celebrating, spending time together, having fun and exchanging gifts. Sadly, most of these were impossible at the end of the last year, which is why I focused more on gifts – some for my loved ones and some for myself.
Continue reading Winter Haul Report 2020-2021 – “It Wasn’t Me, It Was Santa”Category: Haul reports
Autumn Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt – Tranche 3
Not much has changed since the last haul report: there have been no face to face games and no wargame shows either but apparently, this didn’t stop me from buying new stuff.
The first item, TravelBattle from Perry Miniatures, was a real surprise. Though it’s a very interesting period, I have never considered buying Napoleonic minis and I was also sure that I would focus on 28mm and 15mm, with a few 6mm pieces as a rare exception, but after reading an article about this game, it looked very engaging. One single box that has everything you need: terrain boards, troops and a rulebook. After reading a few reviews, it quickly became irresistible, mainly because of the quick and simple but fun to play rules. The size of the minis is 8mm, which is a scale I have never seen before and there are probably not too many accessories for it on the market, which is in a way a blessing in disguise: it will stop me from expanding this into a massive collection with dozens of extra units.
Continue reading Autumn Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt – Tranche 3
Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On
This quarter has been busier than expected, practically I haven’t painted anything but have luckily had very good RPG (Cepheus Light and D&D) and wargame (Stargrunt II) sessions. COVID-19 is still around, so there was no wargame show to report about and the games I played were online, not face to face. But there is something reassuring about buying hobby stuff. This time it wasn’t panic buying like it was in the spring, but a more methodical one.
Let’s start with Patrick Todoroff’s Hardwired rulebook and The Tsim Sha Tsui expansion: these are both short, fifty-page black and white booklets with a bit of background, complete rules, list of equipment and a handful of missions for cybernetically enhanced agents. Sounds familiar? There’s a good reason: Syndicate, the old PC game was one of the inspirations for this game. The subtitle “Cyberpunk espionage and mayhem” refers to a cyberpunk setting, but it’s very adaptable – you can swap the agents with a black ops team, a commando unit, a squad of mercenaries, a recon or a SWAT team and swap the opposing security forces to insurgents, alien bugs, zombies, rogue AI robots, vicious gangs, or your favourite villains.
Continue reading Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On
Spring Haul Report 2020 – aka The Big Spring Treasure Hunt
In a previous post about the cancelled wargaming show, I suggested checking the manufacturers and traders online and spending your show budget on games and minis. Well, I did walk the walk. I have had a proper shopping spree this spring…
On one hand, it was a kind of a panic buying: having an incomplete collection is somehow deeply disturbing for me. On the other hand, I found massive discounts! Most of the things I bought were on my wishlist anyway, so sooner or later, I would have ended up buying them.
Continue reading Spring Haul Report 2020 – aka The Big Spring Treasure Hunt
Winter Haul Report 2019-2020
The winter was long and busy, full of unexpected events, but if you are into the same hobby as I am, you know you can bet on one thing: you will surely end up buying new games and minis.
After my New Year’s post, where I wrote about my backlog and about not buying too much new stuff, writing a haul report might look controversial, so it’s worth mentioning that I bought most of the stuff I’m covering here before the end of 2019.
Continue reading Winter Haul Report 2019-2020
SELWG 2019 – A Slightly Delayed Report
I had one more wargames show left to visit this year, the South East London Wargames Group’s SELWG 2019 on 20th October, in the Crystal Palace Sports Centre.
After the relatively fresh experience of visiting COLOURS 2019 in Newbury, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect, which made me feel a bit like a seasoned veteran of wargame shows: the halls were filled with traders and the demo games were exiting, so the situation was reassuringly familiar. Compared to COLOURS, SELWG felt a bit more spacious, which was partially due to the bigger inner height, but also due to the slightly lower number of traders, demos and a smaller crowd. I really don’t mean that as a negative, the location and venue itself was nice, there was a decent range both of games and merchandise. I’d rather say that the whole show was more of a manageable size.
Continue reading SELWG 2019 – A Slightly Delayed Report
October Haul Report 2019
What a busy month I have had! I played two weekend games (not complete weekends of course but Saturdays, to be more precise), ran a whole day RPG session, visited SELWG 2019 (stay tuned for the report!) and played two evening games. With all this, it’s not a big surprise that I have not made too much progress with miniature painting.
But hey, life doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up. Lots have been going on on the market that forced me to spend a bit of my hobby budget:
Continue reading October Haul Report 2019
Colours 2019, Newbury
There is a first time for everything… and in this case, it was my first visit to a proper wargame show: Colours 2019, in Newbury. For those, who are not familiar with it, Colours is an annual game show, organized by the Newbury & Reading Wargames Society at the Newbury Racecourse.
To be perfectly honest, I was hesitant to go: it was a very busy period, I was working my way through a massive backlog of miniature painting, and it took more than an hour to get there by train, but a veteran gamer friend convinced me to take the trip. I didn’t really know what to expect, as the closest thing I recently participated in, was Fighting Fantasy Fest 3, which was focusing on one single line of games.
Continue reading Colours 2019, Newbury
Fighting Fantasy Fest 3
There are things in life that influence you: books you read, movies you watch, and people you become friends with. Some of these are just short impressions, while some of them have a long lasting effect and might even become an important part of your life.
Fighting Fantasy was published in Hungary in 1989, starting with “Deathtrap Dungeon”, “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain” and “Freeway Fighter”.
Little did I know then that these books would inflame a new passion of mine. I was still in primary school and my classmates were talking about these new books that you can play. A book you can play? It just didn’t make any sense, but when I opened one of them, everything was clear. After reading the first few pages, there was no turning back: I became a fan of Fighting Fantasy.
Continue reading Fighting Fantasy Fest 3