Vanity, I name thee google!

Everyone does it.

You don't like people to know you have, but we are all curious.

Just a quick one, where's the harm?


I am of course, talking about "googling" yourself (what else?). Its something we have all done and usually just for a laugh. I remember my first time, I googled my name and the first results were about a convicted murder on death row. Still it helps on the old CV.

Now being a small business owner, I can tell you we are insanely curious about how the outside world perceives us. Now I have the advantage of having lots of regular customers, who are fast becoming friends, so I can gather some feedback from them. But what of everyone else? Good feedback is easy to find, but what about those who have had a bad experience (gods forbid!).

So I did what any person in the 21st century would do. I googled "Asgard Wargames"

imagine my surprise when I found this glowing review:

http://beardbunker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/top-quality-advertainment.html

Whoever this person is, has my sincerest thanks. I mean really. It made my day. It's nice to know that out there are people who appreciate what I'm trying to do!

So, to you, Assistant Kogz, I say thank you.

The (Multi) World Cup Final!

Well the halfway point in the year has been and gone, like a speeding ball of titanium its has firmly slammed us into the next half of an already crazy year. Why all the Dreadball references? Well here at Asgard Wargames we have finally wrapped up our Dreadball-fest with the final game of our World Cup homage!

Playing for the final were the "Slaggy Island 39'ers", a corporation team managed by the youngest Dreadball coach ever at a mere 7 years old, Ben Hinchley. Facing them were the ever placid "3rd Way" a Judwan team ably coached to victory by my good self!

Heres how the game went:

Rush 1-5

The 3rd Way gain the home advantage and begin their final by getting knocked on their backsides! Luckily they land themselves a cheeky 3 pointer before the unfortunate chap above was taken out (permanently)

The Judwan once again set themselves up for a glorious passing game, netting themselves another 3 points!

The Corporation strikes back! More Judwan get knocked out, leaving a mere 3 left to play! Worse still, they score themselves 3 points, bringing the score back to 3-0 to the Judwan!

Rush 6-10

A plucky Judwan player leaps into the fray to distract the opposing striker and succeeds- the ball scatters!

The plucky Judwan then leaps after the ball, only to scatter it himself- right into the path of the nearest Corporation Striker who goes on to net himself a single pointer!

Rush 11-14

Now the mad scrabble for the ball begins! Using a tried and tested tactic, the Judwan set themselves up for a passing game, whicht he Corporation now try to shut down! Luckily for the pacifists they net themselves a further 3 points leaving the score into the final rushes at 4-0 to the Juddies!

After fumbling the ball all game, the Judwan put the "Pass" into Pacifist and score 3 points netting them an 7-0 victory!

I'll be honest, that game had me on edge all the way until the second half! My Judwan seemed to have greased themselves before the match as they either fluffed their pick ups or found themselves slammed into the ground by over-enthusiastic Corporation Guards!

As the store owner, I couldn't very well claim the prize (other than the glory!) so our 2nd place team won themselves a brand new team!

He chose Judwan. I approve.

Whats occuring?

Hail!

This post will be all about what's happening this month in the shop. Alongside a slew of new gamers, shoppers and painters, we have have now started to build up a core of regulars in store, which is great as it means we can start to organise more in the way of regular play!

1. Painting Competition

Games Workshop updated their paint sets this month so the old ones had to go. After pilfering a few paints for the shop table, I boxed the rest and offered them up for the best painted miniature! The rules were simple, any single miniature from any range could be entered. The miniature was then photographed and put on our Facebook page for a week for our fans to judge. The highest number of likes won the set!

Here are the entries:

 Captain Mainwaring, From Warlord Games. Painted by Ian. 2nd Place










Candy, from Wyrd Games Malifaux system. 3rd Place










Buzzcut, MVP from Mantic Games Dreadball. Painted by Alex.

 Tau Commander, from Games Workshops Warhammer 40,000 range. Painted by Carl











Decembers Fist, from the Children of December box by Wyrd. Painted by Ben

 US Sherman crushing Germans, from Warlord Games Bolt Action range. Painted by Craig












Italian Machine Gun team from Warlord Games Bolt Action Range. Painted by Rob

First place went to this superb 25th Anniversary Crimson Fist Captain from Games Workshops Warhammer 40,000 range. This was painted by Ben H.













Now not only were we thrilled with the competition, but the winner, was in fact only 7 years old! So it was nice that he could be judged independently and without any bias to his age, and still come out the winner! Here he is collecting his prize:

We enjoyed running it so much, we are doing it again this July. Entries with the theme "Master & Commander" should be in store no later than July 5th, with the judging finishing the following Saturday.

2. Dreadball (Multi)World Cup

After the great success of our first ever Dreadball League, we decided to honour the spirit of the World Cup, by hosting our own version! 6 teams are playing, with the top 4 in round 1 going onto the quarter-finals, the last two into the play-offs. Here are some shots of the games:

The results of round 1 are below:

1. Slaggy Island 39'ers (7pts + 10 cheers = 17)
2. Sleep with the Fishes (6pts + 3 cheers = 9)
3. The 3rd Way (2 points + 2 cheers = 4)
4. Metal Martyrs (-2 points + 2 cheers = 0)
5. Splinter's Cell (-6 points + 4 cheers = -2)
6. The Constructicons (-7 points + 0 cheers = -7)

So The Play-offs will be between 5th and 6th, and the Semi Finals will be between 1st and 2nd Places, and 3rd and 4th places!

3. Warhammer 40k

Of course, with 7th edition having taken the wargames world by storm, everyone is playing 40k here it seems! Is it just me or is the logistics of running a game starting to take over though? Take a look below, all those cards, templates, rules etc are starting to overwhelm the armies themselves!

That being said, 7th edition is easily the most fun we have had playing 40k in many years, and we heartily recommend you try it out!

Needless to say we have much more planned for July, including Deadzone, Malifaux and Bolt Action games, as well as the long anticipated return of Gorkamorka....

Until next time Asgardians....

World Building

This week we have been busy preparing for the regional Kings of War tournament that is being held at Asgard Wargames on Sunday June 1st. Back in March when we opened, our local Mantic Pathfinder asked if he could use the shop as the venue for the tournament, and I of course agreed! Little did I think at the time just what that meant...

We are currently still pretty small as wargames shops go, with only 3 6'x4' tables available. The idea with that was to ensure I didn't overreach should things go awry, and so far it's worked out quite nicely, and I've had no complaints (as yet!) about lack of gaming space. Added to that we are open every day, so we can nicely spread out our growing group of gamers over the week. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that in the near future we will need to transform our upstairs into a gaming hall, but that's for a future post.

The tournament itself will be between six players, and we have the perfect number of tables to host that, handily. What I didn't have, was three tables worth of fantasy terrain, as our boards are split evenly between, fantasy, sci-fi and historical. What was needed was a crash course in terrain making!

Happily I managed to botch together some trees and some flower arranging material (Oasis or its equivalent), and have produced some pretty rough, but suitable terrain! Huzzah!

This is our current set up for Bolt Action. Seen here are buildings and fences from 4Ground, and eBay tees and roads, all on top of a Citadel Realm of Battle.

Our sci-fi board is once again based on the Citadel Realm of Battle, with added 40k scenery. I'm planning on adding Mantic's Battlezones stuff very soon!

My most recent acquisition, sat upon a simple grass mat is our latest terrain piece, the Sewers of Malifaux set from Wyrd (this is a work in progress!)

Once our gaming room is up and running, each terrain type will have a dedicated board to save messing on, but for now I'm very pleased with how things are shaping up!

So my question this week is this, how do you approach terrain in your gaming space? Do you go for the simple yet effective, or are you an all out world builder?

Tips and tricks much appreciated, I'm always on the look out for new ideas! 

Until next time...

Planning Permission

Here at Asgard Wargames, we are mostly doing two things. The first, of course, is charging our lasguns and loading our bolters ready for Warhammer 40,000 7th edition next week. After the last post, I had come to the conclusion that it was time to enjoy my Jobby (my Job-Hobby hybrid, of course) and really threw myself back into planning and painting!

The trouble, I find with owning a gaming store (apart, of course, from the bills), is that there are so many awesome games out there that my customers are wanting to play, and only so much time I can devote to each! Of course I want to have a bit of everything so i can join in the gaming fun too, but there comes a time when you have to prioritise and force yourself to resist the shiny toy soldiers!

So this week I settled down to decide what my hobby priorities are for the forseeable future:

1. Warhammer 40,000

The new edition has really fired me up. The idea of unbound armies has shocked many into rage-quitting the hobby, but for me, it represents the perfect chance to have all those ideas I've ever had come to fruition! 7th Company of all Landspeeders? Check. Leman Russ Tank Platoon? Check. Almost 300 Gaunts? Sorry Phil Kelly, but no, the gloss alone would drown my hobby butterfly!

So now I'm looking to my Imperial army (as it now can be called) and my budding Dark Eldar army with renewed fervour. Already this week I've painted up my Captain Darnath Lysander conversion and I'm halfway through a squad of Imperial Fist Terminators to accompany him. Alongside them stand my newly painted Inquisitor and her retinue of followers. So my now 1500pts of Imperial Fists, 500 of Grey Knights and 250 of Inquisition stand ready to face any foe! Years ago, this army would have been inconceivable outside of apocalypse, now its not only game legal, but Battle-Forged to boot!

I'm also hoping to take advantage of the Unbound army rules and build myself a nice army of Dark Eldar with all the fun stuff like the Talos, grotesques and the odd Razorwing, just because I love the models!

2. Gorkamorka

One of the best things to have happened recently is, through random conversations in store, to find that my own love of the classic 90's game Gorkamorka, was shared by quite a few others. So, the idea was formed to resurrect this old gem and get some games going of this frankly brilliant game! So was born, GORKAMORKA REDUX!

A quick rummage in the bitz box and I had myself a Rebel Grot Cutta and plans to build myself a warband of renegade Gretchin. If you haven't seen or heard of Gorkamorka, go to google now. Go on, I'll wait.

Good eh? It really was the defining game of my early hobby life, and I suspect is the reason I look for fun in a game first. If I'm laughing about it before having played it, its for me!

So the guys in store have all begun working on their own mobs. We have classic miniatures form the actual game, through to guys using Warpath Marauders and even a toy car converted into something truly orky! Expect a full blog post about this in the fullness of time

3. Malifaux

Another skirmish game that has recently piqued my attention is the crazy looking victorian-steampunk game Malifaux. Set in a city that sits between two worlds, you lead a band of warriors hunting for soulstones (condensed magic) either to use them for nefarious purposes, or keep them from those who would do so!

Malifaux was a game that I had decided to stock primarily because it was seldom seen but had an incredibly beautiful range of miniatures. Not only that but the 2nd edition of the game is moving towards plastic rather than metal, and the detail on those plastic miniatures is incredible, far in excess of pretty much any other game out there. There was a lot of interest to begin with but with people not knowing anyone to play against, it made them reluctant to take the plunge.

However, I have now gathered a group together to get some games started, and along with a new terrain board (the incredible Terraclips Sewers of Malifaux set), we will soon be battling it out! Stay tuned to the blog and facebook for more

Finally, one of my customers is hoping to start a Bolt Action Escalation League, starting at 500pts. Having recently invest in a bit of WWII scenery for the store, I am now confident that we can get that off the ground in the near future too, indeed I'm eyeing the Soviet Infantry on the shelf as I type...

So, that's my hobby plans for the near future (not to mention the Wood Elves, Deadzone Asterians, Mars Attacks!, and Dropzone Commander stuff I'm hoping to get into soon too!).

What about you though, how do you organise your hobby? Planned or organic? Lots of games or just the one? Skirmish or massed battle?

Comment below.....

Tribes and tribulations

Afternoon all!

First off, thanks to everyone for looking at the blog. I linked up with Natfka's Faeit212 this week and got a really big boost in viewers, so thanks for clicking!

Today I want to talk about how I have found the community since setting up shop. Before I became the greatest retailer in all of Gilkes Street (maybe), I was a humble wargamer, much like yourself (except shorter and rounder). My own "meta" as it's known, had dried up to nothing since leaving uni, I just didn't have the connection to the local wargames scene (despite its size) and so I continued alone for a few years quietly building and painting forces that appealed to me aesthetically.

About 4 years ago, an old friend returned to 40k and with him, came my first games in about 8 years! It was like starting all over again, but that was fine, because we both had a blast! We would game very infrequently, but when we did, it was an event. A full day trip to Warhammer World, a few casual games, good food etc. We loved it, and you might say, that this was now my "meta".

Fast forward to six weeks ago (in a weird wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey sort of way), and I hit a hugely unanticipated flaw in my otherwise brilliant business plan. I had vastly underestimated just how diverse and how factional wargamers had become. Back in my day, you were a geek for playing wargames, and we wargamers stuck together. These days, there are so many different games going, that little sub-factions have appeared.

I seriously hadn't seen the level of factionalism coming. I felt so judged because I carried this range, or didn't know of another it was bizzare. "Can't we all just get along?" I wondered as rampaging Warmachine players chewed through Mantic games, whilst die-hard Games Workshop fans formed a shieldwall against the onrushing hordes of Bolt Action fans. Well maybe that didn't happen. But it sounds good, and that's the main thing...

On top of all that, I've found myself chatting more and more online with others who are finding it hard to get their "meta" to try new games. All too often I hear "My local club is more of a (insert game/company) club so I can't really play (alternative game/company) stuff." Yet I hear great tales from other about clubs like the Redcar Ironbeards  whose mantra is "If you bring it, we will try it". How cool is that?

Anyway, after many weeks of thought, I decided that as an independent, it was my job to bring harmony to the community, balance to the force, the horse to the well etc. I had two ideas about this:

1. Become a defender of the faith. Basically challenge any and all hatred of other games in the hope that people will simply agree to disagree.

2. Become a champion of the cause. Here I would have to be the flag bearer for every range I stocked, enthusing about every range and every model.

Neither really appealed. I had vowed some time ago to dictate my business, and not the other way round. My customers come to talk hobby and so they should, as long as its about a hobby they are passionate about, for good or ill! So this past week I've had debates ranging from how GW is an evil empire run by bean counters, to discussions about how GW are producing some of the most amazing models they've ever done (seriously have you seen this guy? ). I've chatted about how I feel Mantic Games have a lot of work to do on the quality of their models before I buy an army off them, but I've enthused about how brilliant the new terrain is (and about how I'll be first in line when they release Mars Attacks!)

"So, what's the point, you crazy muttering madman?" I hear you ask.

Well it's my hope that by waxing lyrical about how divided the community seems to be, I hope I'm holding up a mirror to you, the gamer. Ask yourself next time, "Do I really need to hate another game/company so much?", "How bad can it be to just try something new?" or "Why the hell did I read that entire boring blog?" At the end of the day we are all Wargamers and we should revel in the fact that we play war in a golden age when our every geeky whim is catered for.

Dreadball League Kicks Off

In the second of our Bi-Monthly posts, we are going to look at what's going on in store here at Asgard Wargames.

First up this, our Dreadball league kicked off with an impressive 8 teams participating so far! Having sold almost every single team box this month, I had been considering picking up the last remaining set, the Judwan, simply because I like the miniatures and felt kind of sorry for the big headed hippies! So I set to painting them up as quickly as I could. Unfortunately they have disappeared and so I can't show you them, so I'll show you the shops demo teams instead:

"Foul?! Iz you blind Ref??!"

"Where the hell is my backup?!"

Needless to say we are having great fun playing Dreadball- most of us have only played a handful of games but with Dreadball (as with all Mantic Games), the rules are so easy to pick up that anyone can quickly become a coach!

Currently at the top of the league are the Krustaceous Krew, a Nameless team with a nasty habit of ganging up on players and slamming them! My poor Judwan lost 2 members of their team (permanently) to the Sticky/Hard Guard Tag Team, and I'm not looking forward the rematch!

Elsewhere, the Asterians (RossCo's Redcar Rocket Raiders) suffered at the hands of a lucky event card making fouling much harder! Still the poor Z'zor team (The Pym City Wasps) did have their only Guard sent off in the first rush due to Asterian trickery so theres no sympathy wasted on them here! The Robot team (Brilliantly named, The Sentinels), convincingly beat the Judwan (the 3rd Way) in 2 rushes thanks to a crippling inability to dodge or steal the ball (Long Arms my backside!)

Earlier in the month we had a lot of interest in Warlord Games Bolt Action, a WWII skirmish game. Despite not having terrain for historical miniatures (yet), the guys happily took to the fields of Europe (which looked distinctly like those of the 41st Millennium):

Personally I'm loving the order dice mechanic; basically in Bolt Action each unit generates an order dice. Said dice are put into a bag along with your opponents dice and a randomly drawn each turn to decide who gets to move their units! Of course this means you could move your entire force before your opponent which makes for a very fast paced game!

We are looking forward to more Bolt Action in the coming months, indeed the Redcar Ironbeards, a local club, are visiting the store on the 26th of April to demo the game, which should be exciting!

Finally its more Mantic Games fun here, with the first games of Deadzone being played! Again this is a fast paced, simple game that I'm sure will be very popular in the coming months:

Marauders vs Marauders! These guys have some serious firepower with those Ripper Suits!

So our first month has passed and now we look to the future. It is clear we have a lot of support for Mantic Games here, not only is the Dreadball League likely to last throughout May, but we have a Kings of War tournament in June, as well as a planned Deadzone Campaign shortly after. Bolt Action is gathering pace and so we will be investing in some historical scenery for the guys to play over. Finally, its my hope that the other systems will start gathering some support. We have a Dropzone Commander day planned to coincide with some future releases, but I'm keen to see some Warhammer/40k and Hordes/Warmachine played in store too (particularly because I'm an avid 40k fan!) so if you ever fancy a game, pop in store, I'm always happy to roll a few dice!

Until next time....