100TH POST – The Abyss Stares Back

Screen Shot 2013-11-18 at 10.48.58We’ve reached our 100th post so I figured as it’s also coming up to the end of 2013, this might be a prudent time to take a pause for breath, glance back over the past six months, allow us suck our own dicks a little and hint at the plans our nefarious cabal has in store for the 2014!!

It still seems crazy to me that we even have a website, let alone one that people outside of our circle of friends would give a shit about. When we started this blog we were just answering to our own muse, to create a magazine style website that neatly tied together the two things that brought our crew of functional gamers together in the first place, that being a mutual love affair with RPG’s/Wargames and the raucous sounds of punk rock and hardcore. Kev laid out ourstall in stark black and white terms right from the start and we figured we might get some mild curiousity from either side of that scarred coin but that would be pretty much that. I fully expected our enthusiasm for this project to fizzle out after a few months and the usual CBA inertia to set in. However six months down the line with 100 posts in the can and we are still going strong. Not that we’ve ever really been the kind of blokes to care if people like or support what we do, we’re all fairly self sufficient units, but I can’t deny a collective flush of pride when we started to see the number of hits on the site steadily increasing far beyond anything we could’ve hoped for!!

Now page hits are all well and good but it doesn’t really mean anything, no the real reward has been in the communication from interested parties outside of our little group hug. Receiving a positive comment on one of our posts or someone reaching out to us through email or saying that the site had encouraged them to check out a band or start rolling dice again, seeing someone wearing one of our moshing marine shirts (Hell being in a position where we even HAVE an audience to justify making shirts) not to mention being used as a resource for larger sites likeComicBookMovie.com or Natfka gives us all a real buzz. It’s totally encouraging to know that we’re just not screaming into the void with this whole thing and that people are reading and hopefully enjoying what we are about.

As the site has slowly grown we’ve welcomed more contributers into our fold. Chris Kohler from California did an awesome series of articles for us focusing on the practical and theoretical of scratch building a games table. Chris and the members of his gaming circle out in California come from a very respectable hardcore background and with a strong gaming pedigree I really hope we have some more stuff coming from those guys next year. As our focus expands beyond the world of Warhammer, we’ve invited Von on board to fill a gap in our collective knowledge and illuminate us on Privateer Press’s Hordes & Warmachine. Check out his own blog HERE

With interest growing it was clear we needed an interface for folk, to encourage conversation, share tips, music, news and exchange ideas. In my experience messageboards have a tendency to become snobby and counterproductive so we started the CH Facebook group to create a place that new friends and interested parties could use get in touch and interact. It’s really pleasing to see that aspect of our community is slowly growing too with games and meet-ups being organised and knowledge being shared.

So that’s what we’ve been up to for the past six months. As for the future? More of the same. We want to keep on giving coverage and lending support to the indies, running features on the small companies and the people who are making cool things happen as well as the bands, labels and promoters that provide us with the opportunity to blow off some steam and dive onto each others heads. There’ll be collaborations with other blogs and podcasts, more independent event coverage, we’ll revive the Tale Of Gamers and there’s going to be more articles on stuff like Bolt Action, the Mantic games, Kingdom Death, Pathfinder and weird fiction. There’s exciting interviews in the works with authors, artists and designers alongside the musicians and hardcore movers and shakers we’re already covering.

Outside of the confines of words on screens we’ve plans to simply get out there a lot more. We’re working on ideas for a podcast and a fanzine. We’ll be putting on a couple of gigs early next year too, there’s talk of a CH Bloodbowl league and we’ve got some more gamey stuff in the works that I won’t talk about yet in case I jinx it. Stevie’s keen to get more involved in the tournament scene for both WFB and Bolt action, Boardy’s setting up a Shadowrun campaign and I’m gingerly dipping my toe into the DM game by hosting some Call Of Cthulhu stuff next year. If nothing else it feels good to be inspired to be creative again. Most of us have been active in hardcore for years with bands, zines, putting on gigs or running labels but all that stuff inevitably comes along with a ton of bullshit that really takes it’s toll on ones spirit. That and we’re all knocking on a bit.

Despite all the positive feedback we’ve received there’s always a few mealy mouthed gobshites and cleanshirt jobsworths who want to shoot you down, that’s fair enough mate, you take your digs if it makes you feel better. To our detractors I offer some sage words from Minor Threat’s Ian Mackaye ‘At least I’m fucking trying, what the fuck have YOU done?’

Anyway there you have it, a quick overview of what’s been going on. We encourage you to get in touch with us, share your thoughts and ideas, tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see more or less of etc. I can’t guarantee that we’ll act upon your suggestions but we’ll certainly take it on board and bounce it around.

So yeah, cheers and that for stopping by and checking us out. We don’t claim to be the biggest or the best or the most knowledgable blog around but at least we’re having a go and having fun doing so.
Peace.

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About Nathan Bean

Tyrant/ Editor Nathan is a 'former member of...' numerous mediocre punk bands and internet gobshite and has been involved in the United Kingdom hardcore scene since the mid 90's. Now retired from active duty he spends his time writing about gaming, movies, music and comics, shouting at the television and threatening to start another band.

2 thoughts on “100TH POST – The Abyss Stares Back

  1. I’m glad I am able to contribute. Credit should also go to Ben Nahoum and Dan Nahoum for the table building article. It was a group effort. I’m looking forward to contributing more!

    I’m really happy that Rob and Ben told me about the Corehammer community.

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