Crisis Antwerp 2012, a short story

Hoi,

Last Saturday, the highlight of my hobby-year came round: the Crisis Convention at the Waagnatie Hall in Antwerp. It was in several ways a "first-time" experience; for one the convention moved from a one hall exhibit to a big two hall location. Secondly we were travelling in a larger company then last year since apart from my brother Lars, our designated driver, and Mark, both of whom joined me last year, we were accompanied by Albert-Martijn from Groningen who had come to stay with us for the weekend.

Before I start with a smallish report of how the visit went, I'll start with my goals for the day. Did I have any? Yes I did, they were rather Limited but all the same here they are:
- I wanted to get some new brushes preferably  Kolinsky's
- I hoped to pick up the Freebooter 2012 Limited edition figure
- I wanted some MicroArt Discworld figures
- Don't shoot me but some GW space marines to finish off my DA's were on the list as well
-I secretly hoped to be able to get a box of Zombicide as well...

We set out around half past nine o' clock in the morning and arrived around eleven, Lars was able to park the car literally in front of the hall's entrance. I can still kick myself in the head for forgetting to make a group-photo of the four of us but what's done is done. We entered the hall and I must say I was caught up in the buzz of the event right away. Orientation was rather difficult because the traders were situated around the demotables and therefore I got distracted immediately when I was at a vendor's booth by a table or vice versa. I started of by going to the Crush The Kaiser table to say Hi to Paul and Ian and see the Marines I painted for them in action in the flesh. Lars kindly made a picture of the 3 of us and I made some shots of the marines in action.

                                                 3 poppies in a row ;-)

That's when the batteries of my camera decided to quit on me and none of the others had taken a camera along so for a picture report I have to refer to others Pijlie and Peter have some up on their blogs.

Paul and Ian did a tremendous job on the scenery as you can see and I think the marines are not too shabby themselves so one hell of a great table to see in the flesh. Supplied with a signed edition of the new ruleset I went on to see the rest of the hall. The first purchase I did almost set me off in the wrong direction: I own the Italeri Norman Church and want to use it for the Peninsular War, the biggest conversion I need to do to be able to use it hence, is to replace the slate shingles for Normandy with Spanish tiles. At a French-speaking vendor I found sheets of plastic with the right scale of tiles. Due to my poor abilities regarding the French Language I ended up paying €24,- for 6 measly sheets of the stuff...

Oh well onto the rest of the show. At most of these conventions the diorama's and demo-tables are of varied quality, let's be honest we all know this to be true. But this year at the Crisis all tables were at least of a very high average quality at the least. While I saw some shabby ones last year still, now everything was in very good order indeed. But there was nothing there, apart for the mentioned Dixmuide table, that really got to me like the Abyssinia table or the Nosferatu game did in recent years. 
That brings me to another point, upon completing 3 rounds of the two halls, we all felt we were ready to go home, it was by then 14.30. A very surprising fact considering we did 5 rounds last year and stayed till closing time... I have had the pleasure to speak to loads of hobby-friends while at the Crisis loved some of the games and demo's, for instance I now know that while I love the appearance of the new X-wing game, I will not start playing it because there's way too much paperwork involved, yet still I was completely happy to leave before time. The atmosphere of the new hall just was not cosy enough I guess.
I missed out on seeing some friends I knew would or should be there as well, Peter should have been around but I didn't see him, Sidney was sadly missing and I missed Tom (of CW toys) who should have been there with a stand as well completely I hope to see you next time mates!

What did I buy in the end?

- Four Kolinsky brushes: two 3 x 0 and two 5 x 0
- 6 sheets of overpriced plasticcard
- a spray can of brown basecoat
- a combat squad of space marines (in the secondhand fair for €10,-)
- 3 Discworld mini's: Granny Wheaterwax, the luggage and Death (who was missing his scythe, Micro Art has been mailed)
- the Freebooter Limited edition mini W00T!
- some 20mm WW1 Frenchies
- a KR Kaiser 1 bag with content foam.
- Opsprey's MAA ANZACS for WW1

Quite a nice haul I'd say and I am happy at that.

I will try the Crisis next year round and try to get more accustomed to the new setting.

Cheers Sander

P.S. Oh yeah I almost forgot: since my brother is not really in the hobby and was only there for the enjoyment of the trip it's not surprising he didn't buy anything, but Mark on the other hand did not, I repeat NOT buy ANYTHING! What wrong with you my friend? :-P You thought I'd forget to mention it right?

Listening to: "History Lessens" by Skyclad

Back into the fold?

Hoi,

It was about time I'd put up a new update. As promised last time; let's delve deeper into my hate-love relationship with GW. My love for historical miniatures out-dates my love for sci-fi and fantasy mini's and as such will always be the mainstream of my hobby-efforts.
That said my first gaming experiences were with Warhammer 40K when at high-school, somewhere around 1995 I came into contact with a few Tyranid and Ultramarines players.I still have very fond memories about that first game, which actually are a great starter for a future blog post come to think of it.
Starting out small with Space Marines of a home-made chapter, I soon turned my attention to the Dark Angels upon reading a White Dwarf containing some Dark Angel artwork showing Interrogator Chaplain Asmodai specifically. Over the years my Dark Angels army grew and both an Imperial Guard- and  Sisters of Battle army were added.

For about 8 years I have lived in Groningen in the North of the Netherlands and it was there that I was really initiated in the wonderful world of tabletop gaming. Thanks to Albert Martijn I started playing 40K and Fantasy (Dwarfs and Empire) in earnest, followed by Classic Battletech and a small and short-lived venture into Warmachine.Since I now had a regular gaming partner and an income of my own the GW ranges formed the mainstay of the hobby.
During the last years in Groningen my gaming network expanded fast and interest in the historical period blossomed accordingly. I found out about playable historical rulesets like Warhammer Historicals and The Great War.White Dwarf lost it's main characters like the Fat Bloke, Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers and turned more and more into a full blooded catalogue with some méh-méh articles mixed in for not-so-good measure. The emphasis of my hobby started to shift away from GW's flagship games toward the Historical variants. What irked me the most were the facts that most GW armies leaned heavily on super-heroe- characters and pimped up über units with through-the-roof statistics, this while the WH Historical rules gave you just regular Joe's with crappy stats and even the elites were not thát great.Now instead of winning by compiling the most perfect armylist and not even shooting so much as one bolter, I had to rely on my wits and strategic insights. So I still lost big-time but I enjoyed it far more because I now had a starting chance when the game began. Another issue was that most 40K games and nearly ALL fantasy games ended in a draw, I really hate draws as a result specially when almost both your entire armies lie dead in the field.

Upon moving back to Roermond, the main audience of players was...non existent. Well I had not found anyone yet to game with. After a small time I met Mark, who's a staunch Skaven player and has, I kid you not dear friends: just ONE army... yes he just has this huge Skaven army but nothing else. Oh yes a small fleet of space ships but that doesn't count. So back I was with GW WHF but the great part was: Mark was just in it for the fun. His Skaven's motto is: I won't fight anybody armed with more then a kitchen knife so my Dwarfs have had a field-day by thrashing his rats around the field of battle and even occasionally charging in! Every 3 months there's this small gaming convention in Amersfoort, the DUCOSIM, where I was able to keep playing CBT and it was there I met Jan Willem (Pijlie) he was into just about anything cool. In whatever scale and setting that could be whipped up. He now turned out to be my new partner for anything historical, soon followed by Koen.

Now with that settled I ditched the White Dwarf subscription, changed it for a Wargames Illustrated sub, best swap ever, and am now safely entrenched in Historical gaming with Black Powder as main ruleset.
So why this whole tirade? Well lately I sold of pretty much all my Imperial Guard stuff and was left gazing at my Sisters of Battle and Dark Angels, to sell or not to sell, that's the question.Why sell anything in the first place you might ask? That's easy: I am narrowing my view on the hobby. It's impossible to keep on doing all different things at once. Not in the last place since I have a limited space available in my hobbyroom. The mainstay armies will remain the Historical ones; Napoleonic, 7YW and TGW. I sold quite a lot of loose ends already like the Assyrians and my ECW Royalists (who by the way will be featured as Spanish in a diorama showing the battle of Roc Roi at a museum in said place itself). The SoB's are just a brilliant and terribly underrated army and all these lovely metal ladies have been so painstakingly painted that I cannot say farewell to them at this point in time. 

My Dark Angels are just that; my little Angels, there's no way in Hell I'm going to part with them. Yes most of them are painted in a horribly outdated style and based even worse but they remain my first brothers in arms even though the existing codexes are shite I will not part with them anytime soon.

Recently the release of Dark Vengeance renewed my interest in them. Albert Martijn sent me the limited edition Chaplain included in Dark Vengeance and seeing the quality of the plastic I really new that a version of said boxed set would be obtained eventually. The renewed interest has led me to start painting up some of the Dark Angel models lurking in my cupboards unpainted for ages. I still had about 15 Deathwing terminators left. 5 of them old metal ones and 10 new plastic terminators. The former now are done and feature down below.

To cut a long story not quite short: let's finish what I have lying around and see what will happen in the future. The Crisis is just a week away after all...

Here's a shot of some of my old and already painted metal Deathwing, they're done over an ice-blue underground which turned out all wrong. Seeing my new ones I really need to strip these and get them re-based and re-painted.

Some of my old plastic terminators, the ones with the swivelling torso's, Space Hulk issue?

Now for the newly painted terminators. I used an Army painter Rat-fur basecoat and worked up from there. The models, as said, are old metal ones including two sergeants since one of the squads above misses it's boss.

I've done the bases the way I would for historical mini's and in hindsight I should have left off the flowers...

Some characters in terminator armour were already in my showcase, but now I'm wondering whether I should re-do them as well, what do you guys think?

Heroe:

Chaplain:

That's it for my trip down memory lane, sorry to have taken so much of your time, but hey you could have stopped reading ages ago ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Skyline" by Yann Tierssen

Read all about it!

Hoi,

Let's talk magazines today. I've been a loyal subscriber to Wargames Illustrated (WI for short) for quit some time now and last month they released their jubilee 300th issue. It has a whopping 300 pages of wargaming niceness. Now to be honest some of these pages are filled with advertising but this is to be expected and these are the kind of ads I do not object to. They keep you posted on new firms and releases in the hobby and allow the WI crew to keep producing their magazine which is fine by me.

Now when WI had a change of management some years ago and Battlefront took over I was terribly afraid that they would go the way down to White Dwarf level; i.e. become an one-firm advertisement catalogue. Now the chaps at WI have managed to steer well away from that course. Yes they do have a lot of Battlefront related articles each issue but they are only to be expected. Apart from that the articles contain just as much background information on WW2 as gaming intel.
The 300th issue brings us the "Heroic Last Stand" theme and is brimming to the rim with great articles about all kinds of last stands in military history. The article I liked the best was the one about the shortest war in history, I won't spoil anything just go and buy the mag yourself. The cover is done up in the old fashioned style which I liked better then the present one but hey one cannot complain. Let me rephrase that: the cover of the subscriber's issue and the one available on-line that is, issues sold at newsagents are done in a different cover. 
That brings me to a question I have wanted to ask for some time, since we left London actually; where do you British gamers obtain your hobby magazines? Waterstones doesn't carry them nor does H&S so please let me know!

Talking about White Dwarf earlier brings me to the second magazine I want to discus. From several sources I've been informed that White Dwarf has changed it's team and format. I checked several on-line reviews and decided to buy one myself and get to the bottom of it. If you want I can give you a statement that says it all: the magazine is lying somewhere in a box with some advertisement folders and I haven't finished reading it yet....

Now while the  new look is a little more grown-up I really liked the very old "Paul Sawyer" style, with drawings of Grombrimdal and some Gobbo's along the edges of the pages etcetera. That said the magazine has managed to make it look as if it is NOT an advertisement catalogue even though it really still is. Instead of just listing the new releases  and stuff they are now introduced in an article by the Dwarfers.The greatest disappointment to me is the battle report. The new Chaos Codex is showcased in it but loads of new mini's and special rules used in the game are not mentioned or explained.

My big problem with anything GW is this: the OLD GW universe (and for me specially this is the 40K universe and in lesser extent the Fantasy setting) is just damn great. It is rich in background with loads of good story-lines and characters, but for some insane reason the guys at GW are insisting on stripping the game more an more of this great background until the main game is more akin to a rather shallow boardgame and if you want to go into more detail and play fluffed games you have to revert to Forgeworld or the Specialist range.
At this moment in time I am very much in dubio about my involvement in this part of our hobby. Word and reviews concerning Dark Vengeance are rather good and the miniatures look the part. The discussion about the worth of GW is not over yet. I have noticed projects like old-hammer where people gather to play earlier editions of both WFB and 40K or similar and that appeals to me rather a lot.

Maybe in future rambling-post I'll delve into this a bit deeper, but for now I'll just sign off,

Cheers!

Listening to: "The Divine Wings of Tragedy" by Symphony X

Nissen Huts ready!

Hoi,

A while back I put up some pictures of my Amera Plastics Nissen huts which I had basecoated by then, well tehy're finished.

Enjoy:

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Wyrd Sisters" a Terry Pratchett audiobook read by Tony Robinson

HäT Spanish Testshots!

Hoi,

Here are the first photo's of some of HäT's new Spanish Light Infantry and Grenadiers. Both sets consist of 8 poses each and so I have split them up in two mixed sets one of which you can see here painted as the Principe Regimento d'Infanteria.

The family shot:

Some shots of the Light Infantry:

The grenadiers ( I really wish I could have done a better job of the bags of the bearskins...)

Hope you like them!

Cheers Sander

Listening to"UNO!" still done by Green Day

Bombed last night...

Hoi,

You might remember me telling you a while ago I am planning to make a trench terrain board for use in the classroom. I want to make it on plywood so I can hang it from the classroom wall. To this I used plastic vac-form trench landscaping plates fit together and the seams filled up with kit. I put in some plastic rods for barbed wire stakes (but have to shorten them) and have started putting more detail to the shell-holes.

I will keep you posted on the progress! 

Cheers Sander

Listening to "UNO!" the new Green Day album

Work in Progress

Hoi,

Another update today and it brings you some random stuff I have done in the last weeks or am about to start with.

First up is an Italeri French stone house, I'm not sure whether I succeeded but I wanted to paint it to be used in the Peninsula.

Next up are some Amera Plastics Nissen Huts. I have 3 of them and am going to paint them to fit in with the Great War terrain I already have. While these huts were mainly used by the Allies during the Second World War, they were designed by a Brit in the Great War and so why wouldn't they have been used anyway?

Last but most certainly not least are some Peninsular Spanish Grenadiers and Light Infantry

Hope you like them,

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Rock in Rio" by Iron Maiden