Plans & Portents

Good Wednesday all!

Wow three posts in as many days! I have not done this in a e while.

So we left off yesterday with the news that I've been made a henchman (thank you to everyone for the grats, and also thank you to everyone indirectly for either encouraging me to apply or for supporting me before, currently and in the time to come).

To (poorly) paraphrase a term heard in almost every Apprentice episode; I've got a fire in my belly and I'm hungry to see how far we can roll with this.

Well before we move on, I'd like to say, so far (1 day) being a henchman seems awesomesauce! I was finding myself lagging with my commitments and determination, something you all probably saw with the quantity of blog posts.

Plus there were less editorials and a lot more 'general life updates' and frankly who wants to read that? :p (yes I am aware of the irony considering this post).

But this has given me a fire in the right place to get things moving! Only time will tell if that fire will fuel my motivation, or burn it to the ground (that sounds so Emo!)

Anywho, yesterday I was lucky to get in contact with the henchmen for Cross Gaming Club and Clapham. Together we are looking at the possibilities of inter club games/tournies/leagues. Currently this is something that we are very Very interested in, and I'll update you in how it goes.

I have also semi finalised details for my demo day at Leisure Games:


These are the flyers I'll be handing to the shop and seeing if he is happy to give them to customers as added publicity. It's simple and to the point - and if you think you could do better, please do - literally, I'm not 100% happy with this, and if someone wants to make these better, please do!

I also come to you this morning with breaking news: Dead Heat: Malifaux World Wide Campaign

This is what we have all been waiting for folks! It's Campaign (beta) rules for Malifaux! And utilising henchmen such as me and those near you, we can roll this out on a global level!

If your interested in taking part in the first global Malifaux campaign, read the link above and check out the rules. This can be tied into leagues, friendlys, anything really. If you and your best buddy has a game and you use the campaign rules? That counts! Just be sure to let a henchman know so the results can be passed along to the campaign organiser.

I'm going to finish off with three more announcements:

First off is Avatar Dreamer:



This is a model which I would say could go either way. I think the photo is not all that flattering, but keep in mind you are got getting the full scale of it. We're looking at a 50mm base here, and that's an actual bed the Dreamer is riding on. I think a sideways photoshot would be the seller for this piece (and if anyone can get me one, I'll love you forever).

Next up is something I've been waiting a very long time for, The Weaver Widdow:


This is a model I love! She's large and a great combination of the sinister, hidden behind a sweet facade; everything The Dreamer and Neverborn in general tend to embody. I may need to modify her a little, maybe give the front of the frock a parting with spider legs spilling out, just to make her even more horrific.

Last but not least we have the Vintage Fate Decks:


Now just look at these, the discolouring, the resemblance to 'actual' playing cards. I see these as very popular and I'll be certainly getting a deck myself as soon as my LGS gets them in!

And that's it for today! Thanks if you lasted all the way to the end, your a real trooper!

I'll be returning soon with more craze and wacky-tacky to keep you all updated, but for now, take care and stay safe.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Of Mice and [Hench]Men

Good Tuesday all!

Well last night I had the great news! I am now an official Wyrd Henchman (on probation).

I am currently speaking with Leisure Games about my first demo session, but I am looking for it to be Saturday 23rd June.

Once I have this confirmed, naturally you will be the first to know and I hope some of you can make it, say hi, maybe take part in a demo (or give me some hints on how to demo better) and more importantly have some fun.

In the spirit of fun, I'll be debuting my 'Steampunk Cowboy' look at this event, however I may still be awaiting my waistcoat as it appears to be coming from Thailand. Regardless, here's a sneaky peak:


That's my trusty hat, had it for about 6 years and it's always done well by me - of course the goggles are a new accessory.

One thing though, I'll be looking to print off some A3 flyers to give to the store in advance to advertise the demo day, something they can show to customers to increase awareness - any ideas on what I should call the event, and subsequent demo events? I'm just unsure if using Malifaux Demonstration as a title will work all that great.
- what about 'What is Malifaux?' written in the official font, with a quick blurb beneath advertising the demo day?

Anyway, thanks for your time and I'll be sure to keep you all updated!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Weekend Catchup: Assumption on Henchmanship

Good Monday all!

So I'm back to working full time for a while, no more days leave and no more bank holidays for a while.

It's a damn shame but in all honesty there's not much I can do about it, so might as well just soldier through it.

It's also pointing down with rain and it's currently before what I would call a sensible time to be awake.

All in all it's a pretty rubbish day.

The weekend wasn't quite do bad however. Yes I have still to hear back about my henchman application (at this point I am assuming I didn't get it, but as with a job interview I'd like to know the specifics as to why not, so I can work on those aspects and apply again in a few months.

But some good news! My goggles have arrived:


Now I just need to wait for my waistcoat to arrive and I'm all set:


(ignore the brown version)

Even without the Henchmanship I'm still going to go ahead with the demos down at Leisure Games it's something I'm quite excited about and I think it should be really fun.

On top of this yesterday I won an eBay auction for the Ortega Family. Very good price considering 4/5 of them are completely unpainted and in good condition (£13+P&P).

One thing I'm looking to do is run Family vs Kin games. Considering the Kin are designed as Gremlin versions of the Family, I really want to see how they play out.

Well that's it from me, take care all - and if you missed it, Aliens: Special Edition was on tv last night. I freaking love that film!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Upcoming Wyrd Info: A Doctor's Second Oppinion

Good day all!

By now I'm sure you're all aware of the Gamer's Lounge Podcast with Eric J of Wyrd: http://gamerslounge.coda.net/2012/06/07/gamers-lounge-episode-54-eric-j/ and it would be irresponsible of me not to wade in with my own thoughts of these announcements.

It would also be irresponsible of me to use no structure or frame while discussing this and just comment on what comes to mind, but I wouldn't be Doctor Loxley if I was entirely responsible!

So let's start at the first thing that enters my head:

Malifaux book 1.5
This is a reprinting of Book 1, only including updated stats for the book 1 models and the recent errata.

From my situation, I already own the manual and so I only want the main books for the fluff. Because Book 1 has been out of print for a while now I've never been able to pick up a copy, and it seemed pointless getting 2 or 3 when I don't have 1.

So for me this is a wonderful thing!

Next up: New Faction
So it's been announced that book 4 will be all about the new faction the Ten Thunders, as seen with the already existing models: The Ten Thunder Brothers for the Outcasts.

I'm unsure how this will work. Malifaux is an already well balanced game compared to some, and the introduction of a whole new faction (with what appears to me to be quite a limited theme - perhaps it should have been made into an Outcast Master, similar to Gremlins) I think this could throw things off.

Then we have the announcement of the new edition of Puppet Wars!

Now this is something I'm quite excited about. Because of the use of plastic sculpts they will be able to fill the new edition box with pretty much everything you need straight away and charge less for it.

Again for me this is good. I don't see Puppet Wars in the same vein as Malifaux. Yes it uses minis, but then so did HeroQuest. With this in mind I really don't have a problem with plastic minis.

But this leads us onto another thing. It was discussed that moving forward if they wanted to do another model similar to Nightmare Chompy, they would probably do so out of plastic. Again in this respect I don't really have a problem. I've never been a fan of NLCB's sculpt, and while I love the size of it, I find the actual quality of detail to be lacking, in addition it's recent retail price of $100.00 is crazy in my eyes. We're talking ~£70.00 for a single model! I can buy a whole crew for that price!

But I do have a possible problem if the cheaper alternative of plastic was rolled out as standard for their models.

I believe that in a game like Warhammer where you need entire squads of the same mini, the plastic option is the cheaper sensible choice, but for a game like Malifaux where having model duplicates is actually quite rare, then you might as well go the metal route, to a point of course (see above about Nightmare Chompy).

Of course there were further details about Terra Clix, and I'm sure they'll prove to be useful, but there was also mention of bumping up the type of Fate Decks available. Among them was mentioned a plastic deck, I'm unsure exactly what was meant by this, I'm imagining a deck the size of a coke can, with each card being the thickness of a GW bulkhead. If they meant Plastic laminate, well I thought they already had this?!?

So what do you think? Ten Thunders? Will that be any good? As someone without the core books I know very little about them, other than the Brother models don't appeal to me.

Book1.5? Good idea? Should they have just released a fluff book instead? Considering the rules and cards are available online.

Plastic Puppet Wars? Will the lower price tag finally encourage you to pick it up? Or will the plastic models feel wrong alongside the metal ones if you already own it?

And plastic models in general? Could it be the turning point for Wyrd? Could next year they be announcing 'Wyrd Finecast'?

And on that harrowing note I bid you all good night and good weekend.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

The Adventures of Geek Dad: Demos & Demographics

Good Thursday all!

Well I love to say it but tomorrow is Friday! Sure thanks to the Jubilee weekend I'm only in the office for three days but right now it feels like much longer.

You see last week my daughter had her first induction to nursery in order for my wife to start her new job as a trainer.

It is my belief that while at her induction the Mini Moo picked up a virus and since has been very sniffly. To make it worse I now feel like death. But not sick enough to stay home from work.

Anywho, as before it seems that everything is constantly changing, and it's hard to think back to only 7 months ago when she was born and acted so differently.

Where as before when she was newborn she would sleep for most of the day and when she was awake she would just want to feed with no apparent personality.

Now how things have changed. She plays, she laughs, giggles and babbles. Why last night during her bath, for the first time ever she played the game 'splash' and she loved it!

Of course with these changes has come a change in parenting. Where as before I felt that we always had to be in the same room as her, now we leave her in her own room for hours on end while she sleeps from 6pm onwards. Yes we have a baby monitor to ensure she's not awake, but that's so small an intrusion.

Well, as I mentioned previously, with this added free time, I've taken it onto myself to apply for Henchmanship with Wyrd. I'm still awaiting a response with this, but on the back of the application I decided it would be best to see if I could organise something with my Local Games Store or LGS.

In my case it's Leisure Games in North London. It might be quite a distance from me, but strangely enough is the closest and easiest available to me.

So I sent them an email asking if they would be interested in me running some demos there in the future, and last night I finally got a reply! And thank Cthulhu! They are interested!

The funny thing about this store is it's space. Whenever I've been there they have always had a good number of tables available, tables that would be perfect for playing games, but for some reason these tables have never been in use while I've been there.

So I've passed the ball back to them, asked what they would need from me in order to move forward with this and we'll see how it goes.

Of course I was sure to pass this information onto Wyrd. I hope they keep this in mind when assessing my application.

And with that we come to a question: what would you all say makes a good demo crew? Currently my match ups are Lady J vs Ophelia, just because these are the available 'simple to play' crews I have. But budgets permitting I would be willing to try buy other crews.


- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Squigfest 2012: How it went

Good Monday all!

To those of us in the UK, it's a bank holiday today and Tomorrow, and I hope you all have fun plans.

As you may remember, Saturday was Squigfest 2012. A day long event full of friendly games of Malifaux. Or so it was supposed to be...

The day kick started at around 10am when the guests started arriving. The plan was to host one large game where every player only used 12SS worth of minions, no masters, no spells, abilities or triggers. This would allow 2/4 of the players to get to grips with how the duel system worked.

Then we would break for a BBQ along with two other friends who were visiting for a catch up.

Following this we would split into 2 groups of 2, 1 'experienced' player vs 1 novice and essentially run 2 demos. The winners would then play each other for a chance to win The Golden Squig 2012!




As a memento every player was given a Squigfest 2012 Malifaux Reference card, courtesy of the cards designed by Ratty:




What actually happen was very different. A lot more chaotic and possibly a lot more fun.

For starters one of the players couldn't make it due to being ill, so the mass demo was only 3 of us. This game however took a lot longer than anticipated,

On top of this we had continuous showers until around 1630 when we hurried outside and had our planned BBQ.

Following this we decided to have another game, just the three of us using 12SS again only this time with rules and a shared Treasure hunt strat.

We has altered the rules on the shared treasure hunt to make it that you get 1VP if you end a turn holding the treasure, then whoever had the most VPs would win!

We were going to have another 4th player from the non-playing guests, but sadly they had to leave too early to play.

The game consisted of me with Dreamer/Chompy, 1 Day Dream and 2 Stitched. The remaining as SS. Player 2 used Seamus, a Bell and a Punk Zombie. Player 3 used Lady J, 2 hounds and a Death Marshal, as with me, the rest as SS.

In turn one The Dreamer turning into Chompy was able to grab the treasure before being pushed back by the Day Dream (which caused the treasure to drop). Lady J went on to kill the Day Dream which turned into a Stitched. The Stitched unburied right next to the Treasure and picked it up.

After a few more uneventful moves, Turn 1 was over giving me 1 VP.

Turn 2 commenced with the Stitched being Lured by a Belle and in doing so dropped the Treasure.

A Hound then ran forward and grabbed the treasure and my Stitched was made Insignificant by Seamus.

This left me in a bit of a bad situation, Chompy and The Dreamer was a little rubbish with Treasure movement due to buying and pushing, so I unburied the last Stitched who Gambled against a Hound he lost enough to ensure that he got reactivate allowing me another 2 life gambles. This time he was able to win and downed the Hound.

Turn 2 ended, and no points were awarded due to the remaining Hound being insignificant.

Sadly at this point the game was called due to time, which left me as the only VP holder!

All in all it was an extremely fun day and we're looking forward to a follow up.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Becoming an 'Artist'

Good Friday all,

Over the past few weeks my wife and I have been watching a reality game show about a bunch of artists who are competing against each other to win 'something' (I'm afraid I don't think I've ever heard them say what they are competing for... I think they may be doing so, just for the sake of it).

Anyway, the other week they had a challenge to create a piece that complimented a bit of work done by a child.

Clearly a lot of these artists decided to go down the introverted, self obsessed "I'm an artist" direction, but I remember this one guy, even though the judges said he was the worst there, he said that he disagreed.

You see he had not made the work to compliment the child's work, instead he had done his work for the child. He said that the child loved it and in his eyes that made him a winner.

Well this got me thinking about my own 'art' that I create. Who do I create it for? Why do I create it?

The answers were simple. I create for myself. Not always because I necessarily want the end result, but because I want to know if I can.

This leads onto the next question: If my target audience is myself, then am I happy with my results? Am I a winner in my own eyes?

These are questions I'm not sure if I can answer in a straight forward manner. You see a lot of my models I am very unhappy with, I look at the paint job, the model workings and I feel ashamed of the model. I would go back and redo them, but I know I can't (currently) do any better.

Other times, I love the end result. My Executioner with his burlap sack covered head, Chompy with his fire-circle base and my day dreams for their pastel coloured skin.

I think the thing with me, I want to see how far I can push myself in different areas, to see if I can reach my limits.

This means that in with creations like Chapel Hill, where the end result excels over my expectations, I love it! But in comparison, Coppelius who I think looks shockingly awful, he's a disappointment to me.

In short: I love to push my style and ability to their limits. But there is nothing more demoralising than when you reach those limits.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley