december indie newsletter - banham and the bucks · included a blood bowl event, space hulk and a...

Aidens Warriors!

There is also a letter of thanks and appreciation from Andy Joyce of our Events Team, detailing the “Thank You Day” event we held, just this weekend at Warhammer World, to thank all of the volunteers who work tirelessly to help us put on events and get information and help out to you all. We hold this event each year in order to show our appreciation for all the hard work put into the Hobby Community by dedicated volunteers.

Hello, and welcome to the winter 2006 Newsletter!

We have a Christmas cracker of an issue for you this time with loads of content from your own fair hands; there are reports of special club events from Jeanette Fleming of the Halton Daemons, Mike Roddham of Walberton Wargamers and Frank Hill of the BRBBA; an army focus and hobby tips from Paul Tennant; the Aftermath Club profiled and a report on the winners of the Best Club Contribution award at this years Games Day, St

So to all of you who have contributed to newsletters and packs, provided or run games and activities at Games Day and other events, refereed at Conflicts and Grand Tournaments, and all of you whose efforts make this hobby community a pleasure to work alongside, Thank You! We couldn’t do what we do, as well as we do, without you!

Enjoy and have a very merry Christmas! Matt Anderson

E D I T O R I A L – M A T T A N D E R S O N

H A L T O N D A E M O N S — S P E C I A L E V E N T S

Halton Daemons are running special Saturday events every month at Halton Lea Library in Runcorn.

Due to demand, as well as running three night a week, the club has now added a special monthly event. The Saturday Specials are gaming days based around a theme . So far these have included a Blood Bowl event, Space Hulk and a Warhammer Day.

The Saturdays which run from 10:30 - 3:30 give

the club members both a longer playing time and the chance to experience different gaming aspects of the hobby. So far they have proved very popular and more are planned for 2007

If you would like to come down and visit us or find out more please contact Janette Fleming via our website: www.halton-daemons.co.uk

Janette Fleming

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W E B W A Y Y O U R P O R T A L T O T H E G A M E S W O R K S H O P H O B B Y C O M M U N I T Y

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

H A L T O N D A E M O N S

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W I N N E R S O F B E S T C L U B C O N T R I B U T I O N A T G A M E S D A Y 2 0 0 6

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C L U B P R O F I L E —A F T E R M A T H

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A R M Y S H O W C A S E

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E V E N T R E P O R T “ G A M E O U T ”

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E V E N T R E P O R T T H R U D B O W L

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C L U B T H A N K Y O U 8

C O N T A C T S 9

H I G H L I G H T S

• Best Club Contribution

• Club Profile

• Army Showcase

• Event Reports

Winter has finally found us this month, with its long, dreary nights and chill winds. Better that we hide inside rather than brave the icy temperatures without… unless you find yourself near St Aidans Warriors GCN club that is. For not every deep hall is safe to hide away in from winter’s chill. In some of the deep, dark places of the world you may bump into hungry hordes of goblins and angry trolls!

This year at St Aidans Warriors we have been awakening Balrogs and tangling with Watchers in the Water as we delved into the rich – and dark – halls of Moria…

This gaming year at the club we decided to take one of our tables to Conflict Scotland and Games Day, mainly to partake in the excitement of these events, but also to show off the talent of one of our founding members (well, ok, its his Church Hall we use to hold the club every week!), Paul Fletcher. Over the past few years Paul has been building some fantastic tables to play on and one of these is his unique Mines of Moria board. To shed some light on how this table came about, I grabbed Paul for a quick

chat:

So, where did the idea for such a board come from?

Where else but the film? Actually, it inspired me but it wasn’t until I saw the

3D boards featured in White Dwarf a couple of years ago. They were so good I knew I had to try to do the whole thing – and make it safe to store.

How did you develop the various gaming platforms?

The model is just a giant box with a frame and skin. It grew from there. Now it’s three giant boxes. I was going to do just the centre piece with the pillared hall and the bridge. It was 4ft by 4ft by 2ft. But I couldn’t leave out the staircase – and how could anyone play Moria without Balin's Tomb?

Then there was the article about the Watcher in White Dwarf and then I had to include Weathertop, Bruinen ford, Lothlorien and … Now its ten foot long, four foot high and 2 foot across!

Can you guess the total cost of it?

Well, this is actually model two. I had to scrap and cannibalize No 1. The idea grew so much. Overall it cost about £200 for wood, nails, lots of different types of polystyrene and paint etc.

How long did it take to make?

So far?! Three years. I didn’t quite manage to do some atmospheric lighting on the staircase and weathertop needs an alternative top so that I can play… Zirak-Zigil!

Future Plans?

Well, I’ve done Helms Deep and Moria and nearly completed Bree. I’m trying to make some mental picture plans for Minas Tirith, but I’m most excited by plans for a 3D Cirith Ungol on top of a 4ft by 2ft by 2ft box, to allow the staircase and tunnels to… Shelob! Spiders and Orcs v Uruks – it’s a must!

What part of the board are you most proud of?

So far the Watcher in the water attracts most folk, but they mostly just gasp when they see the bridge and its 2ft drop into the Chasm!

Paul’s Mines of Moria board encompasses most of the scenarios from the Fellowship of the Ring and truly captures the atmosphere of the fallen Dwarf mine. After all his hard work (and his trusty helpers at the club) the table won Best Gaming table at the Scottish Conflict and at this year’s Games Day!

With more tables in the pipeline, including a 40k one, St Aidans will be

spoilt for choice for what to take to next years events! So look out for us

at Conflict and Games Day!

Allan Maxwell.

S T A I D E N S W A R R I O R S — W I N N E R S O F T H E B E S T C L U B C O N T R I B U T I O N G A M E S D A Y 2 0 0 6


Editors note: due to uncooperative weather pictures will be in the next issue!

In an 11th century, former leper hospital, The Aftermath Club, Norwich, holds its weekly meeting. A perfect setting, the building has so much history and character, whilst still having all the modern facilities required – the ideal place to play wargames! Since we formed Aftermath Club a little over a year ago, the club has swelled in size to over 30 members – all keen Warhammer and historical gamers and hobbyists. In the clubs first year we have run a successful Warhammer tournament, where 20 players from all around the area came to battle it out over 3 games; a painting competition for all types of models, and we even participated in a charity event. (the building is primarily used for The Assist Trust charity).

With these events all going so well, we are hoping to be running them regularly in the future. Warhammer being the main game system played at the club, we have been running a league which is coming to the end of its first season. Next year the players will be split into two divisions depending on their position, as the number of members has now increased to such a size where one league would take forever to finish! The league is played competitively, but everyone still has great fun. Aside from Warhammer our members enjoy most historic games, Wild West and WW2 being particular club favourites, but other games such as 40K and Blood

Bowl are also regularly played with plans to start a Blood Bowl cup in the pipeline. We play all sorts of campaigns and scenarios with whatever game system we play – with some of our club members building absolutely stunning scenery for our tables – ranging from a whole town from the Wild West, a 6’x4’ City Fight board and even an entire galaxy complete with planets and asteroids! Look out for information on our upcoming events in GCN news – next year we are going to be running both Warhammer and 40K tournaments and will hopefully be participating in Games Day as well! Daniel Mashford

December 2006

C L U B P R O F I L E — A F T E R M A T H C L U B N O R W I C H

I wanted my Saim Hann army to be a little different from all the others I had seen so I decided the paint jobs, conversions and bases would all have to be different from the norm!

With this idea in mind I set about converting the Vypers first, I don’t like the gun cradle thing on the Vypers, it just looks clumsy for an Eldar vehicle.

The simple conversion involved trimming the back section of the shuriken cannons (all my Vypers are upgraded with them) and the back sections of whatever heavy weapon the Vyper is armed with so they sit snugly under the front fuselage section to represent `real` viper fangs.

This left the problem of the bare section where the gun cradle used to sit, I solved this with a delve through my bits box and came up with several tail sections using simply Dark Eldar vehicle blades

and a couple of Eldar Epic scale Titan parts as can be seen in the pictures.

The jetbikes were not converted in any way apart from using plastic shuriken cannons where applicable to cut down on cost and weight of the metal components! The riders were converted from eldar and wood elf parts to give a feral look to them, simple really! I tried giving every one a cloak flapping in the breeze but to be honest the join was that fiddly most broke off!

On to the bases: I decided I wanted my army to really look like It was flying so out went the tiny little plastic flying rods and in came some squared of sections of brass rod I found in a local craft store.

I built the bases, first out of stuff in my basing bitz box (imperial ruins/ trees/ bits of slate etc) then I drilled a hole in each base. I then glued in varying lengths of the thinner brass rod. The thicker brass rod I cut into small lengths, a piece of this was glued into the actual vehicle itself (vyper, jet bike etc) so that the model is easily removed from the flying stand for transportation purposes - you know its as if I had planned this through!

A R M Y S H O W C A S E — S A I M H A N N B Y P A U L T E N N A N T


On to the painting… easiest part this! Rather than slogging through painting lots of red by hand I cheated - all of the vehicles were undercoated and painted with assembling to make things easier.

Vyper and jet bike canopies were left of the main bodies, all weapons left off till painted. First undercoating the models black I then proceeded to build up layers of red spray paint from the tips of the canopy, the wings, tails, tips of weapons etc using red spray paint.

Starting with a very light spray covering about half of the canopy then blending the paint up with more and more thin sprays leading to the front of the canopy/ tips of weapons etc .

The front was where I wanted the red to be its most vibrant, there was of course a bit of messy overspray onto the rear sections which I wanted to remain a nice contrasting black so these were simply re done with black spray where necessary.

The pilots/ cockpits where done using the cockpit glow idea from White Dwarf a while ago, saves a lot of time painting!

The bases were all simply sprayed black including the rods, the ground sections were drybrushed with Bestial Brown then Bleached Bone, the ruins were simply drybrushed Codex and Spacewolf Grey, the

rocks done in a similar fashion, clumps of static grass where added to this after the bases where sprayed with purity seal.

Using the above method I can paint a Vyper from start to finish in around 25 minutes (including cockpit and gems) it may not be the best paint scheme ever but it certainly gets a lot of comments .

Paul Tennant

Rainhill Wargaming Club

December 2006

A R M Y S H O W C A S E — S A I M H A N N B Y P A U L T E N N A N T

this space for ourselves. Late afternoon on the 26th October, Mike, the club leader, and his trusty Volvo turned up at the Cathedral with 4 gaming boards, extension leads, rulebooks, dice, measures, tables, chairs, energy drinks, chocolate, caffeine tablets, etc, etc. The rest of the team turned up about an hour later and at 8pm, gaming commenced with 2 mega-battles – one each of Warhammer Fantasy and 40k. We had a lot of visitors, curious to see what we were up to, and through the early evening the hobby was always being explained to someone or other. At about 11pm, we put up some screens between us and the sleepers and settled down to another 7 hours gaming. Just after midnight, the first member caved in and crawled into his sleeping bag. Two others dropped during the night but the rest just kept on gaming. We played 40k, LoTR and (appropriately for a clear, starlit night) Battlefleet Gothic. Mike spent the night mainlining Lucozade and pleading with people to keep their voices down. Not that it mattered, as there were several groups near us who chattered through the night. Until about 3 o-clock it was quite mild but then the temperature started dropping and by the morning we were all glad of the free hot chocolate

Early one evening in late October, 12 members of Walberton Wargamers gathered in the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral. Not for glue sniffing, poker or drugs, but to raise money for the local homeless refuge. Every 2 years, the Chichester Christian Care Association (which runs St Joseph’s night refuge and local day care facilities) holds a Sleep Out event. Children, teenagers and adults get sponsored to spend a night sleeping rough around the Cathedral. Some come with sleeping bags, some with cardboard boxes and there is a competition for the best cardboard shelter. Rather than sleep out, the club decided it wanted to Game Out – sponsored, all-night Warhammer and 40K! After some entertaining phone calls explaining our plans to the organisers, they agreed that we could try it as long as we didn’t disturb the sleepers. Then we called the Cathedral to try and scrounge some nice warm, well-lit space in their restaurant. That didn’t work; the restaurant had just been redecorated and wasn’t available to sleepers – or gamers. So we would be in the Cloisters with everyone else. Fortunately, where the cloisters join the Cathedral is a covered porch, 14 feet square. We agreed with the organisers that we could arrive early and ‘bag’

and soup that was available. We stopped at around 6 in the morning after 10 hours non-stop gaming. Everyone was remarkably bright and cheerful, considering they hadn’t slept for 24 hours! We raised over £700 - not bad for 12 teenagers. The whole event is expected to have raised over £9,000. An annual, money-raising event for charity looks like being a regular fixture for the club. In 2005, 20 of us held an all-day gaming marathon and raised over £1100 for the Tsunami appeal. But, having gamed all day and gamed all night, what can we do next? Mike Roddham Walberton Wargamers

E V E N T R E P O R T — ” G A M E O U T ” - W A L B E R T O N W A R G A M E R S



I believe everyone had a good time - they DEMANDED I do it all again next year and even got me a thank you card. It was worth all the hard work – begging all of the prizes.

Charity events are not only more worthwhile but easier to arrange too! People are much more willing to help, donate or attend for a good cause. Most said they had either told the wife “but love, its for charity…”. or their partners had come too and spent the whole weekend shopping in nearby towns or sunbathing at the Witterings or Bognor. We all felt we celebrated a common cause and although there were a LOT of hangovers and one or two late arrivals Sunday morning, no one cared if they won or lost.

On 22-23rd July 06 GCN club BRBBA held a charity Bloodbowl tournament in Bognor Regis in aid of Breast Cancer Research. The tournament was themed on Thrud The Barbarian, and was supported by artist Carl Critchlow, author Matt Forbeck, several Games Workshop staff and both local and international gamers & businesses. Over 30 Bloodbowl coaches from all over the British Isles played 6 rounds of Bloodbowl over the weekend, cumulating in prizes, trophies and awards. We held a charity auction with items donated, and raised £622.25 for Breast Cancer Research! We also held on-the-spot competitions , for example “next touchdown wins a can of Thrudweizer”, complete the slogan “cheerleaders are great…”, and so on.

We also held a Most-Thrudlike competition, where a few brave individuals posed, punched (me- as I forgot the punch mitt!), bellowed and belched to the all female judging panel, before telling us their most Thrudlike moment.

I’m hoping this article will motivate some other GCN members to hold charity tournaments, particularly for the smaller or non mainstream games. I reckon the gaming hobby could support perhaps half a dozen such events a year (one for each game maybe), and whilst its hard to launch a new event against established tournaments, good planning, a theme, and good networking 6-9 months beforehand can achieve great things.

On the subject of networking “Thrudbowl 2007: The Sands of Time” is 21-22 July 07, entry is £18, and unbelievably we’re already 20% booked to our 70 coach hall Maximum capacity! Look out for when the website updates end of January latest - or check out last year’s site at www.thrudbowl.com

Any prize or auction donations, groovy ideas or such concepts would be gratefully received either from the website via the contact_us link or email at [email protected]. Frank Hill BRBBA

E V E N T R E P O R T — C H A R I T Y B L O O D B O W L - B R B B A

Tables were on offer to allow guests to play games of Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer, The Lord of The Rings, Warhammer Ancient Battles and Legends of the Old West for the day. It was a great opportunity to enjoy some old favourites, as well as to try something you may not normally have access to.

Honoured guests were greeted by coffee, pastries and the entire Events and Community team, who had turned out to not only run the day, but to also serve everyone. This included the 2 course lunch which was served by the Community and Events teams to their guests in the canteen. The day was rounded of with an awards ceremony, where everyone attending received a thank you certificate, while a very special award, the Hobby Champion Award, is given for services above and beyond the call of duty.

Every year Games Workshop puts on a very special event for a select group of Hobbyists. It’s not open to everyone, it’s not widely advertised, but it is one of the most important events we run for the hobby Community. The event is the Club Thank You, held at Lenton every December as a reward for everyone who has helped Games Workshop promote the Hobby through the year.

This year’s event was held on Sunday the 3rd of December, and saw hobbyists from across the UK attending. The aim of the day was to lay on some fun games and to generally ensure everyone had a good time at a free event for everyone who has helped Games Workshop Events, Community or the Gaming Club Network during the year.

The day itself had a really great atmosphere, as well being enormous fun for everyone who attended. A big thank you should go to the Bugmans and restaurant team who fed everyone, the workshop guys who made sure there was some stunning terrain for people to use and finally to everyone who volunteered to work the day and make it a success. All in all, a good time was had by everyone who attended, and more than one person asked when the next one was. Thank you very much to everyone who made the event possible, as well as to everyone who gave us a reason for having it in the first place. Without you, it just wouldn’t have been possible. Andy Joyce Warhammer World Event Project Manager

E V E N T R E P O R T — C L U B T H A N K Y O U — L E N T O N


Copyright © Games Workshop 2006. The text, rules, and all other materials contained herein are the exclusive copyrighted property of Games Workshop Limited. All rights reserved - A single copy may be downloaded and stored temporarily on a single PC a printed for personal, non-commercial, educational or research use and reference. Additional copies, whether electronic or otherwise, may not be made or distributed without the advance, written permission of Games Workshop Limited. Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo, Battle Bunker, the Black Library, BL Publishing, Space Marine, Ork, Tyrannid, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, Codex, Warhammer, the Warhammer logo, the Gaming Club device, Warhammer World, Warhammer 40,000, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, illustrations, and images are either ®, TM, and/or © Games Workshop Ltd. 2000-2005, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

C O P Y R I G H T N O T I C E

Bek Hawkby

Community Advisor

Bek provides phone and email support for all of the clubs with whom we are in contact .

If you have any questions, or you just want to have a chat about your club, you can contact her on 01159168380 or by email:

[email protected]

Matt Anderson

UK Community Team Manager

Matt Anderson is in charge of Games Workshop’s Community team. With more years than he cares to mention of hobby experience he can answer any questions you may have regarding clubs and

community activity.

He can be contacted on 07766072413 or by email:

[email protected]


december indie newsletter - banham and the bucks · included a blood bowl event, space hulk and a...

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