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Showing posts with label Games Workshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games Workshop. Show all posts

Sunday, 30 August 2015

Life Update

Howdy do folks,

So a little life update, I passed my Resit of my Unix exam so I have a BSc in Computer Networking, so whoop.

Went to the first ever UFC in this great, mighty small nation on the planet, there was one bad fight all night, and all three Scots won that night, the atmosphere was out of this world, UFC's in the US aren't like that, but Europeans, we bring the sane atmosphere we do to Football matches.

Back on a painting kick after having painted two whole fleets of Dystopian Wars Air fleets for the Claymore show, which was alright but it wasn't anywhere as good as Carron adequate,  which we got a special mention in Wargames Illustrated.

I painted a 50 soul stone crew for Mali faux,  it came out awesome all but the Crew leader that is.

I'm in the middle of painting my younger brother's Warhammer Khorne army, it'seems going very well at the moment. Managed about 40 chaos warriors so far, I'll post pictures when I'm done.

I'm single which sucks but we persevere.

I've been a bit broken for a couple of months, my back hasn't been doing well at all, all stemming from an idiot screw up trying to do a single takedown with a lift rather than a drove. Dumb ass move it was.
This means I've put the weight I had lost this year back on. But I will be hitting the training again soon. And I started doing Yoga to see if that can help with the back.

A World of Their Own, a book of Short stories by members of the Alliance of World builders, a group of writers including myself, that met on the now defunct Authonomy website, is due to be released on the 4th of September on Amazon in the UK and USA, it'll be £8.99 in the UK and $13.99 in the US for the paperback and £1.99 and $2.99 for the Ebook, I'll be doing my usual shilling like a villa over the next week.

All proceeds to the book are going to the World Literacy Foundation, which is an awesome charity who try and get youths out of poverty through literacy and education.

Oh, my baby sister had a little girl, Zoey, and she is the most gorgeous, cute, lovely little pudding of a baby. She is awesome.

So, that's pretty much it for now.

Friday, 26 September 2014

Progress Report number how should I know.

Alrighty folks

So, it's been a couple of months since my last update.

Just spent the better part of three months losing over 30 pounds, and any time anyone tells you excercise is fun is talking out of their ass, it's not fun if you are 50 odd pounds from healthy and want to kick that fat's ass, got another nine pounds to go before I get back to the gym and start rebuilding the upperbody and getting arms to resemble the tree trunks that are my legs.

That's going to be slowed down due to me starting my 3rd year of my degree, it started last Monday and I'm already bashing my head off of the wall at one of the modules, Proffesional Issues in Computing, more like philosophical claptrap designed so I don't go out and start destroying people's computers just cause I'm getting paid to do it. I'm already a member of the BCS, the rest of the course isn't bad so far other than the fairly heavy duty labs for Unix, but Unix is frigging important for anyone that wants to deal with more than 2% of the World's servers.

Just found out that I'm potentially going to be published again somewhere around Christmas, you may have noticed that They Rise and We Smite was removed from the blog, that would be the reason for it, there's also another couple potentials. I had submitted it to the Anthology well back into 2011 but it never seemed to ever be going to materialise, hence the posting up here, but my good friend and all around crazy worker Sammy HK Smith, author of In Search of Gods and Heroes, available at Kristell Ink Publishing, and her team at Grimbold books, who recently held a very successful Kickstarter campaign to keep the indie publishing house open for another couple years, are going to publish it, more on that when everything is finalised and I'm actually sure that I'm going to be featured, from recollection They Rise was a bit of a frigging shambles and in need of some serious editing. But I'll probably still shill it anyway since it's a charity anthology and I can resist shilling for charity.

The Falkirk District Wargames Club to which I am a member is doing a Necromunda campaign, which I bought the day it came out way back in 1995 and had been playing in campaigns on and off into the early 2000s but probably not since 2004. I was going to use Ratskins, none of the official models right enough, just some Sci-fi Native americans that I had from some game that I got for nothing that I never ever played, I had converted them and painted them and then played with them a couple of times and promptly realised it that was a slightly dumb idea to use a gang that had no heavy hitters and ancient weapons even for today's standards. So I promptly changed my mind, and decided that I would use one of the House Gangs. Back in the day I used Orlocks, cause back when I was young and stupid, I liked the look of them so I bought them. This time around I decided that I would choose a gang that was more geared to how I play games, full tilt aggresive, so I went for the Goliaths. I was just going to use the plastics I had from the two boxed sets that I had bought in 1995 and 2002 the first for a fraction of the actual price in some one day sale that the Glasgow Games Workshop had on. But the problem with the plastics was no individuality, even putting in new heads and converting heavies, it wouldn't have the flavour of my old Orlock gangs where I only used one of each of the plastic figures, so I went onto ebay to see if I could find any, find many I did, and I promptly put three bids on two of which were essentially the same models, minus one player or another, the other was a group of Orlocks incase I didn't get the Goliaths and I could just supplement my old ones with the new ones. I was thinking, I might win one but I'll never win three, nope I'm an Idiot, I went and won all three, so here I am sitting with all these models and thinking, gods damn it I'm still going to have to get converting shit, though screw trying to convert the heavies, just be two heavy stubber identical twins with some different tatts and a different hair colour.

Once they're all done with the paint jobs, I'll be uploading the pictures from each stage of the process, a well documented one, I like projects like this where every model itself is an individual project in it's self.

As for the writing of the books, it's in it's constant state of who the fuck knows, I think I started another two projects over the summer and really didn't do much of it, though I did manage to sit down and go through Burn Forest City Burn, and decided the title sucked a disesed Monkey's puss infested nut sack, and the second go at the first edit will be beginning as soon as I get a few spare days to sit and go through it, line by line, otherwise the writing hasn't been too far up the line over the last couple of months, felt a little disconnected from my creative side for a while.

For this current Glasgow District Wargamers Society club year I will be doing both the Falkirk Carronade show and the Edinburgh Claymore show, both will be Dystopian Wars, Carronade will be a port strike, witht he Prussians striking a Brittanian port, possibly Malta, or Gibraltar, the port itself I won't be making, that'll be down to the esteamable George Dick who's Wild West town at this year's Claymore (At which we were fuckin well robbed of the best Public Participation game by the Political shitheads at SEWC, who I found to be kind of obnoxious and cunty) was absolutley stunning and made all the more so by his hand crafted Mine. The pictures are somewhere which I can't remember and I'll post them at a later date. The Claymore one will be probably an aerial battle between Brits and Prussians again, mainly cause between us in the club that's the most collected fleets.

Anyway, that's me all up-to-date as far as I can think of.

Adios



Thursday, 17 July 2014

Clearout

Well, today I did what every gamer I know dreads doing, deciding what in their collection is dead weight and needs to go and what they use and gets to stay.

Needless to say not the most fun moment in my life, as collections that were painstakingly put together are going to be put to the wayside and sold.

To be fair though it's figures that have barely been out the box in the last ten years and none of them have even seen the light of day for the past five, except when I was looking for a box of something and cause I'm a lazy get haven't labelled them.

My entire Star Wars Minitures collection, all 74 Revenge of the Sith and  48 Clone Strike models in a box ready for another persons gaming tables.

My Catachan Jungle Fighters, which I'll admit hasn't got the best paint job, but was kittbashed with abandon (Empire Free Company boxed set were awesome for that back in the day where 15 quid got you twenty to thirty a box) along with Metals which are few and far between these days, the classic big ass bazooka missile launchers, the Captain big enough and ugly enough to wield a power fist and a bolter and make anything but a marine of any stripe his bitch, the wheelie heavy weapons teams, and the Heavy flamer teams that scared the bejesus out opponents in a jungle.

My Dark Eldar that I've been slowly but surely pairing away for the last couple of years, mine are all of the original run, when Scourges looked badass rather than like fairies and something with bat wings, and Warriors that looked Eldarish but with plenty of blades to cut you up.

And onto my flintloque collection, small it may be but for the dozen times it was out the hand crafted carry box that they are in (I'll be keeping that for sure) it was much loved, my 105th Rifles along with Sharke and all the characters so lovingly ripped off from the Sharpe Novels, my orc foot and Ogres along with a great big hound from somwhere far off that never got to play, of course the Duke of Wheeling-turn on foot, the Velite Grenadiers de la Garde who I never got to play nice ever, always ruining the plans, my Voltiguers that made the Grenadiers look like puppies, then there is the Witchlands mob that like the ogres and orc line, never got a game, unfortunately my only opponent for the game sauntered off to the land of Hobbitses.

Which marches me onto my Lord of the Rings models, what a frigging waste of time they were buying, the Fellowship, warriors of the third age, moria orcs, rohan, uruk-hai. I stopped at the Two Towers because not only did the game blow, Games Workshop had got to the point that their over inflated prices had finally taken there toll and I gave up to go onto pastures Historical, where you could buy three whole armies in 15mm for one GW army.

And last but no means least, the surplus Battlemechs, yes there is such a thing, Mechs which I have at least one of (If not more than one) of already and will never use in a battle because one or two is more than enough.

But there is a side to them, 9 Rogue Trader Space Marines, two of which were in the first release of Marines, all more for collecters rather than the current crop of players, considering one, as you could in Rogue trader, is armed with a freaking shuriken catapult, no doubt scavenged from the Eldar pointy eared ponce that he's just stomped to death.

So the list is drawn up and been passed onto Gateshead games to see if they'll take the whole lot off me before I need to think about ebay and other avenues. If the price is right they can have it at Claymore but if  the price isn't anywhere near my minimum I will be considering other avenues.

Of course as the money comes in it will probably be feeding that insatiable Dystopian Wars addiction I have developed, the new Battlegroups for both my main fleets land and air will do nicely and by the looks of it my ally fleets are going to be getting some goodies to. Of course some of the money will be liberally spent on libations in my favourite pub, just as soon as the dry month comes to an end.

Monday, 19 August 2013

An excerpt and some thoughts.

  Little bit of Running out of Space, one of my works in progress, it comes in after the main character Caleb O'Hearn has been talking about the history of Psionics and language in the Magiverse to demonstrate his genetic memory from his Magi heritage, that bit is about six hundred words itself and it's a little bit lecturing but part of the rolling history into the story without it being just flung at you so I'm not going to post that. After the excerpt there are a few thoughts of mine on shared universes and collaboration between writers and shared timelines.

****************

'But it's funny to watch you drone on and not even realise it though, but also educational. Learned a little piece about my own heritage while bored shitless about yours.' Kerry-Anne told him and he flipped his middle finger at her. 'That wasn't Magi ancestor knowledge, all of your Magi ancestors were Hunters, Guardians and Soldiers. Where did that come from?'
'Sarah of Trenton, her sire's sire was a Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of New Amsterdam.' He replied with a grimace. 'When the hippie pothead wasn't on a commune.'
'Your warrior attitude would be an embarrassment to him as much as he's an embarrassment to you.' Kerry-Anne chuckled at him. 'Hell his granddaughter was an embarrassment for joining the FIB. He considered the whole notion of war and Big Government pointless.'
'War is fuckin pointless.' O'Hearn sighed and Kerry-Anne gave him a look of surprise. 'Show me a true warrior that wouldn't rather he never had to fight again, and I'll show you a damned liar or a homicidal maniac that should never be in uniform, like dear old dad. It is true, I am never more alive when I am chasing down prey or fighting hand-to-hand in a struggle to the death, but I've been stabbed, shot, sliced open, gouged, blown up, and had to heal from those wounds too many times in what has not been the longest life. I would really rather that I could spend the rest of my considerable life time with my feet up until I'm old enough that it's the end for me and one last battle for me to shuffle off the mortalish coil and sit in Bilskirnir until I am needed  once more.'

************************************

 This plus everything else I'm working on, is running through my mind constantly, interlinking all the Magiverse stories can be a bit of work, especially when you are jumping two thousand years from the time of Gabriel to the time of Caleb,  and even when I jump just under a hundred years to my cyberpunk work, totally inspired by Continuum and Shadowrun, Corporate governments and Megacorporations.

Haven't seen series two of Continuum beyond the third episode been too busy with writing and painting soldiers. I can have TV shows in the background if I've seen them before but if it's new I have to actually sit and concentrate on it. But I'm getting off topic.

When I'm doing the Cyberpunk I have to remember what the map of Gabriel's Terra looks like even though it's all in my head (not the best idea, right now it's a bit fluid), trying to fit the Corporate Nations later in the timeline to nations from earlier in the timeline and then having to remember to use the right names in Caleb's time can hurt your head sometimes but I love reading shared universe fiction, and seeing how they evolve and how the stories evolved from where, granted you don't normally see three different periods on a timeline at the same time but that's me, glutton for the punishment I put upon myself.

I always wanted to be one of those authors that inspires collaboration with his fellow writers, I think that's what makes the Roleplaying, Comic book and TV & Movie shared universes so fun to immerse yourself in is the vibrant and many voiced reality, that no-one person is telling the story. Don't get me wrong they always need a strong hand to guide the ship and some of my favourite books series are written by one hand but I still believe it doesn't happen nearly enough in Sci-fi and Fantasy fiction that many hands help to form a better universe unless they tie in with a TV series or Movies or RPG's. 

Often enough authors will have others write for short story anthologies from their Universe which they edit,  but I think personally that D&D settings especially the Forgotten Realms Novels and even the Games Workshop forever dubbed the Evil Empire, fictional universes are made so much better, deeper and more real by the dozens of authors that write in the universe, though I'm sure most authors wouldn't like giving up money they would make writing their own work. 

People I'm sure will quote the expansions of the Cthulhu Mythos, the Man-Kzin Wars that added to Larry Niven's Known space, the expansion of Asimov's Foundation series and the adding to Lyman Frank Baum's (A prophet was he) Oz, the additions to Robert Howard's (Himself a Cthulhu Mythos expander) Conan, to me but I will also point out none of these except the Man-Kzin wars were ever done in the original author's lifetime.

But I won't deny that's always something nice to see, people trying to anticipate what would this author have written about next if he hadn't passed onto the halls of Valhalla, and I do applaud that, I would however like to see more authors collaborating to expand their own universes.

That's my end for today, off to the Falkirk District Wargames Club tonight, so dinner and work out an army, which I should have done last week when I was sitting on my arse at the club.

Friday, 8 February 2013

Rant time

Evenin folks,

It's time for another patented (pun intended) rant from your friendly neighborhood crazy.

A friend of mine posted this on facebook and I became fairly annoyed because of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21380003

This is a pretty much a fuck you to the company Games Workshop, so anyone reading this from the company, try threatening me with legal action, go the fuck ahead, you can suck my balls, it's called freedom of speech assholes.

As a former player of Games Workshop games, former purchaser of your products, if find it a joke. You screw anyone who buys your products with over priced figures and games, there are plenty of 28mm producers who price their products far lower than yours and yet they are much smaller than you, don't see how you justify that same as I don't see how you justify screwing someone who is just trying to make money to do what they love doing and make some money from it, the Trademark on Space marines is meant to protect the Space Marines from being copied by others for profit, but I find it funny when you have Quake, Timesplitters, Halo, Dead Space, Mass Effect and Starcraft, which as we all know is a thinly veiled 40k knock off, you haven't sued Eidos, EA, Blizzard or Microsoft for using the Space marines in their games, it's because you are afraid that if you did you would get laughed out of court, but you sue someone who would have absolutely no way of fighting you because they don't have the money to do it back doors the term becoming IP of Games Workshop. It's not only despicable, it's downright corrupt, but then I'm not surprised by that coming from the Evil Empire of Wargaming.

I've got two words for that.

FUCK YOU.

As a Science fiction and Fantasy writer I find it absolutely appalling that you are trying to co-opt a term that has been used in Science Fiction for over eighty years, considering you assholes got the idea from Traveller and Laserburn, so my Space Marines from my Military Sci-fi series become unusable, I don't think so assholes, and you can go ahead if/and when I publish it to try and sue me, take me to court all you like, I live in the UK and oh, yeah, we have a little thing called Legal Aid, so the kind of thing that works against Americans that can't afford it doesn't happen here.

In short, FUCK YOU, you greedy, thieving assholes.