Twenty-four green creatures. I made the miniature for the 2006 FU-UK sculpting contest. It took me eight years to paint these. Pathetic.
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Wednesday, 11 March 2015
Hamburg Tactica 2015 / Day Two
Sunday morning we had breakfast in the hotel Superbude, waffles and lots of coffee. Krüger, Andi and Jörg continued to talk about Einstein and Heisenberg.
Around 11am Sven and Andi left Hamburg. Jörg, Krüger and I spent another day at the Tactica. It was less crowded, much more relaxed than the day before.
We met Mirco Wenning and Elmar Fischer, the owners of Stronghold Terrain, who have recently translated SAGA into German. I almost bought the army list compendium from them. It includes all the dark ages army lists released so far. Stronghold Terrain had two presentation games. One table was about Saracens versus Crusaders with a beautiful castle section and well painted miniatures. Krüger joined this game. The other table was about vikings.
Since Jörg keeps bugging me about how he wants to play vikings in our 400 BC ancient campaign, we played a 2 point Saga demo game at the second table, Vikings versus Anglo-Danish. I think I finished the Vikings in one turn, by using an ability to prevent the movement of one unit and by attacking the rest of Jörg’s army with my entire army. I’m thinking of writing a hoplite list for SAGA. It seems to be the game of the hour.
I walked around a bit, taking pictures, and ended at a table where Alan and Michael Perry and Aly Morrison were sculpting. I asked Michael Perry how to get a smooth surface on green stuff sculpts, something I have been struggling with for years. He recommended a moisture cream by Elizabeth Arden, if I’m not mistaken. EA9 emollient. (Please keep in mind that English is not my native language.) I then had a chat with Aly Morrison about 3ups and 3D scans. At one moment he suspected I was interested in making digital pirate copies of miniatures, I think. So he said, people complain about the high prizes at GW, sometimes even send hate mails. A professional sculptor should be able to have a decent life, he said. If he couldn’t afford to buy hifi loudspeakers, he wouldn’t start to send hate mails to Bang & Olufsen, would he? I replied: “You are a professional sculptor, Mister Morrison. I love your work. The figures you did for Talisman, for example. I’m an amateur. Sometimes I like to sculpt a trashy miniature and have it replicated, to play with it.“ He laughed and recommended that I should make my own moulds.
I walked around a bit more, taking more pictures, and bought a die with pictures of dinosaurs on it and a brush. An hour later we left the Tactica.
We went to a café to wait for the train. Jörg claimed that the Perry twins couldn’t possibly have sculpted so many miniatures, that they must have an assistant who does all the work for them. Jörg and Krüger started to discuss this.
An old man was sitting at the next table. He was wearing a pink hat and a chain with a cross covered with coloured stones. He held a cane with a silver head in his hands and starred into space with empty eyes. Looking at this old dandy was much more interesting than listening to a conversation about GW’s online shop strategy and Michael and Alan Perry’s mysterious assistant.
Around 11am Sven and Andi left Hamburg. Jörg, Krüger and I spent another day at the Tactica. It was less crowded, much more relaxed than the day before.
We met Mirco Wenning and Elmar Fischer, the owners of Stronghold Terrain, who have recently translated SAGA into German. I almost bought the army list compendium from them. It includes all the dark ages army lists released so far. Stronghold Terrain had two presentation games. One table was about Saracens versus Crusaders with a beautiful castle section and well painted miniatures. Krüger joined this game. The other table was about vikings.
Since Jörg keeps bugging me about how he wants to play vikings in our 400 BC ancient campaign, we played a 2 point Saga demo game at the second table, Vikings versus Anglo-Danish. I think I finished the Vikings in one turn, by using an ability to prevent the movement of one unit and by attacking the rest of Jörg’s army with my entire army. I’m thinking of writing a hoplite list for SAGA. It seems to be the game of the hour.
I walked around a bit, taking pictures, and ended at a table where Alan and Michael Perry and Aly Morrison were sculpting. I asked Michael Perry how to get a smooth surface on green stuff sculpts, something I have been struggling with for years. He recommended a moisture cream by Elizabeth Arden, if I’m not mistaken. EA9 emollient. (Please keep in mind that English is not my native language.) I then had a chat with Aly Morrison about 3ups and 3D scans. At one moment he suspected I was interested in making digital pirate copies of miniatures, I think. So he said, people complain about the high prizes at GW, sometimes even send hate mails. A professional sculptor should be able to have a decent life, he said. If he couldn’t afford to buy hifi loudspeakers, he wouldn’t start to send hate mails to Bang & Olufsen, would he? I replied: “You are a professional sculptor, Mister Morrison. I love your work. The figures you did for Talisman, for example. I’m an amateur. Sometimes I like to sculpt a trashy miniature and have it replicated, to play with it.“ He laughed and recommended that I should make my own moulds.
I walked around a bit more, taking more pictures, and bought a die with pictures of dinosaurs on it and a brush. An hour later we left the Tactica.
We went to a café to wait for the train. Jörg claimed that the Perry twins couldn’t possibly have sculpted so many miniatures, that they must have an assistant who does all the work for them. Jörg and Krüger started to discuss this.
An old man was sitting at the next table. He was wearing a pink hat and a chain with a cross covered with coloured stones. He held a cane with a silver head in his hands and starred into space with empty eyes. Looking at this old dandy was much more interesting than listening to a conversation about GW’s online shop strategy and Michael and Alan Perry’s mysterious assistant.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
Hamburg Tactica 2015 / Day One
On the 21st of February I went to the wargaming convention Tactica with Krüger, Jörg, Sven and Andi. On the train to Hamburg Jörg read a coffee table book about Brian May’s guitar. We later had a discussion if the Perry twins are the Brian May of the tabletop hobby or not.
Around 1pm we played Conan, a game run by the club Kurpfalz Feldherren, using SAGA as a rule engine. They had an impressive gaming table with an oriental castle, adobe buildings and excellent palm trees. The castle had been built by one of the organisers of the Tactica a couple of years ago. He had actually cast every single brick in plaster, using Hirst Arts forms. Amazing. The scenario was about Conan having to rescue a princess while some bedouin snake conjurers attacked the castle. Conan won, of course.
In the afternoon we split up. Sven, Andi and Jörg played White Death, a skirmish game by Bernhard Hennen, presented by his club THS. I had played the game last year and had enjoyed it a lot. What Sven has to say about it, you can read here.
Krüger and I went to another room in a section of the Tactica, which was dedicated to Napoleon and his battles, and played Wavre 1815, Prussians vs. French. The gaming table had attracted us, a board made of wooden tiles. The game used blocks with 20mm miniatures as units and had a card-driven control mechanism. When I had difficulties telling one unit from the other, the author of the game suggested I should take a close look at the uniforms. We had lots of fun with this mix between a tabletop game and a board game.
At night, we went to a Greek restaurant. I have recently started to learn Greek, so I kept repeating ευχαριστώ, thank you, the only Greek word I have learned so far.
Sven has suggested we should start a blog network for our ancient imagi-nations project and I wanted to talk about a name for it. Beyond the Pillars of Heracles? The Imaginary Ancient Islands Blog Network? Karubi Islands? When I mentioned it, Jörg just said: „blogs are dead“ and thus ended the discussion.
We got drunk on three liters of Imiglykos wine. A couple of hours later, around 1am in the lounge of the hotel Superbude, Krüger tried to explain Einstein's relativity theory to us. He said something about a ball falling into a blanket.
Around 1pm we played Conan, a game run by the club Kurpfalz Feldherren, using SAGA as a rule engine. They had an impressive gaming table with an oriental castle, adobe buildings and excellent palm trees. The castle had been built by one of the organisers of the Tactica a couple of years ago. He had actually cast every single brick in plaster, using Hirst Arts forms. Amazing. The scenario was about Conan having to rescue a princess while some bedouin snake conjurers attacked the castle. Conan won, of course.
In the afternoon we split up. Sven, Andi and Jörg played White Death, a skirmish game by Bernhard Hennen, presented by his club THS. I had played the game last year and had enjoyed it a lot. What Sven has to say about it, you can read here.
Krüger and I went to another room in a section of the Tactica, which was dedicated to Napoleon and his battles, and played Wavre 1815, Prussians vs. French. The gaming table had attracted us, a board made of wooden tiles. The game used blocks with 20mm miniatures as units and had a card-driven control mechanism. When I had difficulties telling one unit from the other, the author of the game suggested I should take a close look at the uniforms. We had lots of fun with this mix between a tabletop game and a board game.
At night, we went to a Greek restaurant. I have recently started to learn Greek, so I kept repeating ευχαριστώ, thank you, the only Greek word I have learned so far.
Sven has suggested we should start a blog network for our ancient imagi-nations project and I wanted to talk about a name for it. Beyond the Pillars of Heracles? The Imaginary Ancient Islands Blog Network? Karubi Islands? When I mentioned it, Jörg just said: „blogs are dead“ and thus ended the discussion.
We got drunk on three liters of Imiglykos wine. A couple of hours later, around 1am in the lounge of the hotel Superbude, Krüger tried to explain Einstein's relativity theory to us. He said something about a ball falling into a blanket.
