Denizens of the Garden of Nurgle: a Dark Age of Sigmar project

About two years back (probably at a similar time to when I actually bothered to write something for Corehammer, funnily enough), some friends and I were talking.  We’d just been playing a game of Inquisimunda (also known as INQ28). Bit of background for those that don’t know what it is: it’s a narrative style of skirmish gaming at 28mm scale with an element of RPG, and typically revolves around inquisitors and their retinues investigating nefarious happenings in the grim darkness of the far future, with special emphasis on the “grimdark” element. Depending how you want to play, you can utilise a GM, which our little group does on a rotating basis. The system is community created and is largely based on the classic Necromunda rule set (although some people use the 54mm scale Inquisitor rules and perform some really specific technical calculations that make it sound overly cumbersome and doubtless dry as fuck – I mean could they not just divide by 2 and sacrifice a single millimetre?  Some people like to take their chosen level of dunce-nerdery to ludicrous extremes, I suppose) with character stats ported over from Warhammer 40k, adapting where necessary in order to ensure characters and weapons are not over or underpowered, for like “balance” purposes and shit.  You’ve seen Blanchitsu in White Dwarf, right? Well that’s basically the visual vibe atmosphere we’re talking. Continue reading

Corehammer Armies: Old Woden

As part of our continued revamp we are bringing back some of the more popular regular monthly features from yesteryear. First amongst those is Corehammer Armies. Each month we’ll be shining the spotlight on the mighty forces fielded by our extended circle of heroic generals and warmongering tyrants. In this instalment Chief Chirpa has a nice chat with Joe Wilding about his very sick Treemen, Dryads and Wood Elves. Read on… Continue reading

Playmats.eu – We are the new breed (Of battle mats)

Solid roundabout skills. Jar of Mellow Birds just out of shot.

Battle mats, basically a grown up version of the old road/town carpet mat I was told to play on, during my first day of infant school. No idea why I remember that so clearly but there you go. I don’t even like cars. Anyway, they’re patterned to look like some sort of terrain of your choice, lava, steppes, snow, jungle, you get the idea, and roll up nice and neatly. None of that eternal “how do you store a realm of battle” rubbish. They’re usually made out of any one of a myriad of different  polymer compounds to provide a flat colourful surface for you to play wargames on. Pretty much all the same eh?

Well not quite, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing the full set of mats from playmats.eu and they’re a cut above the rest. Read on to find out why.

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Corehammer Single Figure Challenge

Despite the glut of (by my own admission) fascinating articles, reviews and interviews posted on Ye Olde Corehammer this past few months, it pains me to admit that we have been woefully bereft of hobby content.

‘Not enough painted moon men‘ was the cry from the peanut gallery, and who am I to deprive our readership of their bread and butter? So here we have the resurrected Single Figure Challenge.

It’s dead simple right, submit a single figure that you’ve been working on recently to be scrutinised by our readers. The miniature can be from any games system or manufacturer, just send some nice pictures alongside a bit off text telling us a bit about it. Sounds easy doesn’t it! Yeah well you’d be surprised at how hard some folk make this, anyway here’s our entrants. Vote for your favourite in the comments below, winner get’s a £20 Element Games voucher. Crack on. Continue reading

Angelcore 2017 – An Age Of Sigmar Tournament

Introducing Corehammer’s first AOS tournament, AngelCore 2017!

We have teamed up again with local London club, Angel Wargamers, to bring you a 2 day event on the 25th to 26th November at a brand new multi-system gaming venue in East London.

This will be a 32 player 2000 point matched play tournament using GHB2017 but with added secondary objectives. This will be held at EXP Leisure on the edge of the Olympic Park, just 15 minutes walk from Stratford Station. This really is the largest gaming venue in London and has tonnes of space, great food and a full downstairs bar next to a Canal, so should be great for Saturday night.

As nerd venues goes, this place is light years away from the dodgy, cramped gaming stores that we are typically used to.

Each ticket is only £25 and gets you 5 games of 2000 points matched play AOS. In addition to this, you will have FULL ACCESS to all gaming zones at EXP for Friday evening and then all day Saturday and Sunday. There is a run-down of each zone below: Continue reading

Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets: Building a Modular Ruined City

So at the end of April we gathered in San Diego for our first official Corehammer West Coast Chiller. A month or two before that I had gotten the crazy idea of building a modular ruined city for the event so that at least I’d wander up with something to add to the festivities. I ended up only having something like 3 weeks to build the thing starting at the beginning of April, but in the mad dash to produce something I did manage to document the process so I figured I’d share it with you all now. That way you can learn exactly what I did, ignore it, and make something way cooler on a normal human schedule. I’m going to describe what I did, and not go too far down the rabbit holes of ideas not considered or techniques not used. Feel free to ask questions in the comments about anything you want though. Corners were cut, designs were simplified, but in the end, I had a table that can host a number of games in all sorts of different setups.

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COREHAMMER FEST 2016 Review – Swinton so much to answer for

This is an article nominally about my trip to Stockport to attend Corehammer Fest 2016 in October. If you can’t be bothered reading the whole thing, it was a great time and you should go to the next one if you can. If you can be bothered slogging through my ramblings, hopefully you come to the same conclusion.

Corehammer Fest Flyer

“Come to the fucking North”

This was the response I got when I floated the idea that I’d be over to London in early 2015. Not exactly the warm welcome I was hoping. You see, for Americans, the UK wargaming scene is often seen as a sort pilgrimage to be made. The motherland where the hobby in a modern sense was launched, where the biggest and most influential companies are based, and where every field and lane probably has dead soldiers from some medieval armor wearing era buried beneath. But on this trip in 2015, I saw none of that. I did manage to meet up with one very special Stevie Boxall, who took a couple Californians to a British Mexican restaurant and a walking tour of brutalist London architecture, cheers. But that was the start, when I returned for work almost a year later I finally made it out of London and to the wonders of GW and Wargames Foundry (covered in a previous DungeonPunx Podcast, you should listen, but probably won’t) and was shown an incredibly warm welcome by a bunch of good dudes. That experience planted a brain worm that burrowed deep, and ensured I’d be coming back again, and would make gaming a priority when I did. So, when the dates came out for the October 2016 event, I said fuck it and plotted a way to make it happen.

What did I get myself into?

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Oath of Moment – The Dwarves no more shall suffer wrong – Part 1

Dwarfs_Art_1

“The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.”

This time of year breeds resolutions like a fetid swamp spawns plague carrying mosquitoes. Gyms, health food stores and libraries get packed as legions strive for self-improvement after the decadent and sometimes soul crushing holidays. A newer better version of your life is tantalizingly close if you just change these small things, form new habits and check boxes off a list. Easy as can be right? Eat less, exercise more, be kinder, care less about work and more about friends, value experiences over things. Now resolutions rarely work, and often if you look back at previous resolutions you could just carry them forward year after year and nothing changes. Honestly, when you catalog what you don’t like about yourself, these are usually those things that don’t change, so you find some outward trait to attach meaning too. A month of pushing off hard in all directions, trying to do everything at once as part of the new you, crashes out, and by March you’re cheating yourself and by June you’ve forgotten all about it. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though. This hard look in the mirror at the lazy bastard staring back at you is important, and can be quite positive, you just have to do it more than once a year. So this is the 1st of what I hope to be a monthly update where you have visibility into, and hold me accountable, to my gaming goals. Instead of just talking shit about all the things you should or could be doing, I’ll have to actually step up and produce. God help you. Continue reading

2016 Oath Of Moment Challenge aka My Yearly Attempt To Eat My Hat

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Painted up for me courtesy of Chris Mcgreevy. A GW oldhammer Red Redemption cultist, a Wyvern from Reaper Miniatures and a Barrow Warden from Reaper’s budget Bones line.

Over the past couple of years we’ve developed a bit of a Corehammer tradition that we like to call The Oath Of Moment. At the dawn of each new year we take stock of our respective piles of shame. With sober and unclouded eyes the participants in this cleansing ritual swear a solemn vow to make a significant dent in reducing said pile. More often than not these well intentioned boasts of change and progress fall to the wayside by March but for some amongst our number these Oath’s have motivated some serious hobby development. Continue reading

Unfinished Projects: Embracing the chaos of my mind

sisyphus-1549.jpg!Blog

If you have a hobby, you have projects. Honestly it doesn’t matter if you’re into miniatures, rpg’s, fishing, music, ridiculous cars or quilting, you always have things you want to be working on if you just had the time. Now the nature of our modern lives means we never have the time we think (or want) to move this stuff forward, which creates a backlog of unfinished, sometimes only dreamed of projects. This is the chaos of your mind. That disheveled area were wild ideas are left to roam. Now there are two methods of dealing with this chaos, especially in gaming.

  1. Complete each project you start methodically, focusing all attention and thinking on one thing at a time. Don’t even consider other creative endeavors until you’re at a finished stage on the previous item. When people ask what you’re working on, it will be the same thing as last time and you always complete what you start.
  2. Keep those dreams alive. Embrace your hobby wobbles and tangential flights of fancy filling your life with mental explorations of those things you’re passionate about. Love the chaos.

So if you can do method 1, congratulations, you’re probably a robot. Seriously, look at yourself hard in a mirror, try and remember the last time you got sick, have an expert ask you cross referenced questions about empathy with a Voight-Kampf machine, because you might not be human. If you can seriously tell me you never think about something new till you’ve finished the old, I don’t fucking trust you. This article is for the rest of us. Those that fall more squarely into method 2. It’s about the rich landscape of the mind and how planning projects, dreaming of armies/systems/terrain and games is an important part of the hobby that should be acknowledged and celebrated. Continue reading