Excuses, excuses..

Oh boy, has really been almost ten years!? Well, I guess my 'Big update - I'm back!' plans did not quite work out so well. In all seriousness my life has moved on a lot, both professionally and personally. These days I find myself with more time on my hands again, which allows me to yet again dust off that bookshelf (because that terrible, terrible metaphor will now follow me to the grave) and crack open some old and new boxes. I think I am now old enough to stop making excuses for not being a dedicated blogger, and instead just post content as and when I feel like it. I'll start today by summing up my past decade of gaming.
Back then I really enjoyed Infinity, and to date I think it is one of the best sci-fi skirmish games out there, but I simply did not have the time and opportunity to keep playing regularly. I still love the whole universe and the miniatures, so I kept my collection for rainy days. Neoterra for the win!

I stopped playing Malifaux around when 2nd Edition was coming out, as I kind of lost my love for the game and the models. No real reasons here, I think I just had a bit of a burn-out. Lots of good memories, but I don't really miss the game.

My Ancients Celt army is sitting neatly in its foam box for the few and far-between games we can play with my old friend.
That same friend got me back into Necromunda too, but more on that later.

I stopped playing miniature games for a long while there. The occasional D&D, Magic: The Gathering, or board game night with my friends and colleagues (none of whom have I managed to convert over to playing miniature games) filled the chasm.

My rackham miniature collection kept growing thanks to my unrelenting hope that Confrontation and Cadwallon will come back from the dead. They also came in handy for those D&D games; you betcha there were giant wolves and goblin samurai all over the place.

CMoN helped me acquire a bunch of minis with very similar aesthetic through Kickstarter. I got a Teknes and Hadross army from Wrath of Kings. The game is now discontinued, but I really only wanted the minis anyway so happy with this either way.

Speaking of Kickstarter I now have all the Cthulhu miniatures I have ever wanted (or will ever need), and will never paint.

The first thing that pulled me back into playing miniature games was Warhammer Underworlds. The super quick games, the tiny model count, and boardgame-like mechanics made this an amazing game for someone with my kind of hobby-time allotment.

This is, however a Games Workshop IP, and, as we all know, that is a slippery slope.

The next thing I knew I was playing Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress instead of other boardgames with my friends. The game has great atmosphere very cleverly made to appeal to the old-timers like myself savouring the nostalgia moments and weird xenos races and lore that didn't quite survive the concurrent renewals of 40k. The base game comes with a ton of great miniatures luring you back towards the 'grim darkness of the forty-first millennium', which of course I had to get.
I swore to myself I would not have another box-full of unpainted minis, so...

The next purchase was an airbrush. This, I have been eyeballing for close to 15 years, but as I had a bit of a slowdown with the hobby I could resist it until now. I now fully regret not getting this 15 years ago, it would have made painting masses of minis so much easier.

My final line of defense against returning to full-on hobby life was breached when my old friend from Hungary mentioned how he recently got into Necromunda, and I realised how easily I can 'multi-task' with my existing miniatures between various games.

Back in the nineties, when I was still oblivious to the darker side of 'the 40k hobby' we had this skirmish game we would occasionally play (but mostly just chat about) with my friends. This was Necromunda. Loads of terrain, running over (and falling off) walkways two stories high, opening doors, shooting through corridors, campaign play, experience, loss of limbs... it was fun. It was everything we loved about 40k, about D&D, and about the corny sci-fi novels we were reading at the time. In many ways Infinity is a much improved competitive version of Necromunda for me. These days, however, I very much appreciate the unbalanced, not so serious nature of this game, so I caved. My Blackstone Fortress miniatures were very quickly airbrushed and gang rosters were made. I was a proud owner of a Chaos Helot gang and a Venator Gang.

Games Workshop actually re-released Necromunda in 2017, but I completely missed this. Thankfully. Apparently the early rulebook economy was classic GW, with erratas, FAQs, corrections, expansions, and multitudes of contradictions making the game a bit of a fun killer money-sink. In 2019 they recognised this, and summarised the rules into less (and better laid-out) books. Since I only just got into it in December (of 2019) I got in on the sweet end of the curve.

It has to be mentioned that the player community of Necromunda is one of the most devout and most amazing hobby communities out there. The game (similar to the fantasy version: Mordheim) never really went away, as the community kept playing and updating it even after the GW support has dried up. Do check out Yaktribe if you ever wanted to get into Necromunda, they have all the help you need to get started, other than the rulebook, miniatures, and a friend to play with.

So that's about it, in a nutshell. After a whole lot of wandering I have arrived back at where it all began, playing a GW game in the 40k universe. Most of this year has been building and converting various gangs for Necromunda, and playing games over video call since the whole lockdown protocol began. I'll be posting more about this all later. Maybe.