The Responsible One's Wargaming Blog

 

As previously mentioned, after Christmas I managed to get in a game of Infinity at War Dollies Collective. My opponent is pretty new to Infinity, so we picked the Direct Action mission Superiority. I dug out my White Company because they're the prettiest models I have and I wanted to show off.

I ended up going second. My opponent was on Next Wave, so I hid my expensive pieces but left out a couple of defensive pieces like a Sierra Dronbot.

My opponent managed to score a console so I sent up a Peacemaker's peripheral to try and my way. While I managed to clear a mine and wound a Tekdraken, but wasn't able to capitalise on it. I realised at the end of the turn I'd simply not pushed up far enough and my opponent scored points for controlling more quadrants.

I sent the Beasthunter after Patroclus (played here by the WarCor model) and the Raindancer fireteam. Patroclus refused to die and the Beasthunter was swiftly dispatched.

On the right flank, I wasn't confident of clearing the Juggernaut, so I sent the Kunai Ninja to hold it up, and block it's ability to shoot models I needed to advance. I pushed my Nisse / Jujak fireteam up but was only managed to draw the quadrant scoring.

I managed to push my Jujaks up the table, having cleared an Ironside, and the engineer managed to push a button for a console. In the end, my Key Ops controlled a zone, but Next Wave controlled the other three, winning the game for my opponent with a score of 6-3.

All in all, it was good to get back to a game of Infinity. I did spend way too much time forgetting to focus on scoring objectives, but we both had a lot of fun. White Company are still a "sometimes" faction for me, but it was good to get them out for a little run.

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.


My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

I have been pottering on with assembling the Halfling Blood Bowl team. I'd hoped to be a little further along than this, but an assortment of non hobby activities took up a bunch of time. Still, excellent human interaction and resting occurred. 

 

The arrival of over 300 miniatures from Wildspire Miniatures has also taken up a chunk of time. These models were originally designed by Blacklist Miniatures, who then ended up being incapable of delivering. Wildspire purchased the moulds and produced these models, offering original backers a significant discount to acquire the miniatures. There's still a Horror set that Blacklist failed to deliver that Wildspire has purchased and not produced yet.

So, it has still been a very busy couple of weeks from a hobby perspective. The coming month has some LARP, some card games and some work travel which won't produce interesting things for the blog. Still, I have a few stories to tell about my Infinity game and the Wildspire minis that I'll tell in a short while.

 

As we reach the end of 2025, I'm taking stock of what I got up to hobby wise this year. Much of the year has been taken up with a house move, but I did get a bunch of painting done before we moved. I haven't started painting in the new place just yet, but we should get onto that some time soon.

I started the year finishing up a Battletech Lyran lance. The idea here was to get to the point where if an opportunity for a starter game comes up, I'm ready to go with a painted lance. An opportunity hasn't come up yet, but it's a good thing to have ready to go.

And finally, I got these goblins painted up. I had these Aenor Miniatures on my paint table for months, if not years, before I finally got them done. It was great to get them finished before I packed up to move house.

So, a relatively quiet year from a painting point of view. The goal for the coming year . . . can wait, for now. I have thoughts, but for now, I can sit back and be proud of a good range of figures I got painted this year.

 

With the Dungeons and Lasers dungeon tiles put away, the next thing on the hobby desk is a Halfling Blood Bowl Team. With the new edition out and plenty of folk playing GW games in Nottingham, it seems like a nice little project. I don't have the new rulebook yet, nor any Treemen, but I want to get these assembled before getting anything else.

I've gotten my first Halfling assembled. I also cleaned the mould lines on the coins, turn markers and balls that come with the team. There's a couple more Halflings I've started on too. It's been a while since I assembled any GW miniatures. The last one I tried to do was one of the Inquisitor characters, and they were incredibly fiddly and awkward. This halfling was a joy - three parts, relatively limited mould lines, and brimming with character once done.

The trick now is going to be setting up a regular schedule to put some time into assembling models. The aim for the next year is to try and be steady with progress. I have a lot of ambitious ideas, and I need to put time into the hobby to try and achieve them.

I finished removing my Archon Studios Dungeons and Lasers Caves set from the sprues, and thought I'd report back on it. I spent a little time playing around with the layouts, and learned a whole bunch. This shows more or less the amount of tiles you get in the retail Caves set. I've only put walls on one of the rooms at this stage, but it gives you an idea of what you get.

Bear in mind when looking at all of this that all I've done is cut these tiles off the sprue. They come pre-painted - as I understand it they're painted by machine - and the paint quality is as good as I'd likely be bothered to do on some dungeon tile terrain!

The tiles come with moulded points to add connectors which join the tiles to each other and the walls section. They go together quite easily, and it's a firm connection so they don't come apart as you move them about.

Here's how a small room might look once you've made it up. The holes can be used to add walls, or you can add a simple grey peg to fill the space if you want it to be an open area.

You then add walls on to finish the effect. The curved pieces are two parts that fit snugly together before you push fit them into the relevant connectors. You can put them on the sides, or create a wall across the middle of a room if you wish.

At the time of writing, you can buy this set unpainted for £75, or the painted one for £95.

I will caution that it's quite a bit of work to set them all up - you need a little bit of oomph to get each connector to go together, and when you're doing a bunch of rooms, it gets tiring quick! I gave up on getting everything out at around this point - I'd definitely started with the intent to put walls on everything. 

I also got three smaller "themed" sets too. Given the aforementioned loss of oomph, I didn't get everything out - but I wanted to give an impression of the kind of thing you get. This is the spider set, which has narrow bridges held together with strands of web, and tiles covered in web and egg sacs. 

You can see the "Deep Mines" set floor tiles in the bottom room. There's also a bunch of walls with cool crystals that come with it that I did fail to photograph.

The Deep Mine set has two pairs of these stairs up to a pile of gold and treasure. This could be excellent set dressing for an abandoned mine, or perhaps a dragon's lair.

I also got the Goblin Lair set, which has this great little mini hut / building that attaches to tiles. I just attached it to the standard Caves tiles at this point, but you also get a whole bunch of themed tiles for a Goblin Lair too.

The goblin lair tiles are a lot more rickety, with lots of planks with gaps and detritus on the stone floors. I think if you were using either the Spider or Goblin sets you'd probably want to have a black cloth underneath the set to represent the gaps. They definitely weren't quite working on my white table.

The goblin set came with a handful of details like this dead dwarf that you can plug into some of the connection holes to add extra detail. There's not enough for every hole, but it's good to add a little variety.

With my experience putting these together, I certainly wouldn't want to try and assemble them on the fly for a randomly generated dungeon, or as I went according to a map. Assembling a whole large dungeon map also seems like a bad idea from an effort to reward point of view, though I could see an exploration set piece with something to mask sections being quite fun.

If you're actively using these, you probably want to either have some pre-constructed for a fight you're expecting to have at some point, or be pacing your games so a fight starts just before a break or at the end of a session so you can set up for the start of your next one. They do take some serious time to put together and I'd practice doing it a couple of times before committing to doing it on the fly mid game.

I think it's worth noting that you both need quite a lot of tiles, but also get quite a lot in a box. With all the above out on the table, I still had all the below still to use. I got mine through the Kickstarter, but one core set is likely plenty for most standard encounters you're putting together.

If I was going to expand what I have, I'll likely be looking at their older sets that have been converted to Prismacast that are designed as humanoid built dungeons rather than a cave network.

 

I picked up a few bits and pieces at the Gaming Fayre last weekend. Nothing major, as I have plenty to be getting on with. First up is "In the Land of the Sundering Flood", an RPG by Mammoth Miniatures inspired by the writings of William Morris. I knew of Morris as a designer and didn't realise he was also an author, so I'm looking forward to have a read through this and maybe researching his bibliography too.

I got an excellent "please don't make me take this home" deal from Mammoth on these bits of eldritch ruins and this "dragon" - who is wingless and thus obviously a wyrm. 

I also got a free turtle person and gnome from Krakon games. They are both delightful.

I'm hoping to get all these bits prepped and assembled over the Christmas break so they don't end up just vanishing into the stash. But first, I have more Dungeons and Lasers to clip out!

 

I finally got to the point of having some hobby tools out, and decided to start with the Dungeons and Lasers Caves Kickstarter. This is very fancy pre-painted RPG terrain produced by Archon Studios. I backed the Kickstarter and thought it would be good to get it all off sprue, and into some much better storage boxes.

My logic was to start with the simplest job - clipping out the terrain connectors. Doing a third of the add-ons connectors took up all the time I had that hobby evening. Whoops! Still, it was good to get something done, and its always best to start with eating your vegetables...

 

Yesterday I ended up on a little expedition to the other side of Nottingham to attend a "Gaming Fayre" I'd seen advertised on social media. It didn't seem to be heavily advertised so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

It was held in a brewery and tap room, and I sadly failed to get any good photos of the giant tanks around the venue due to a lack of common sense. There were quite a few small stands there. There was a gaming club from Arnold I've been meaning to check out, Krakon Games, Mammoth Miniatures, Ramshackle Games and Warp Miniatures.

Krakon Games had free samples to give away, along with a crate of miscasts you could fill a bag up with for future kit bashing mischief.

They then had a display of a whole bunch of their range, and the giveaway bags had a link back to their shop.

Mammoth Miniatures had a more extensive selection of their things - both miniatures and books. 

I'm a huge fan of Mammoth's aesthetic. The miniatures have a very "home made" feel, and there's a very deliberate art style too. I had a good chat with them about their art inspirations, which range from William Morris to Moebius.

Ramshackle Games, meanwhile, had a small demo table, where they were running participation games. I didn't manage to grab a time myself - too busy chattering away to people. He also had a few bags of bits and pieces for folk to buy, including his excellent anti-Brexit art project.

I failed to get photos of the Warp Miniatures stand, or the gaming club stand. But it was a fun little event. It was about the right size to run from 12 - 5pm. You could drop in for a bit of the time and see everything, or take your time and grab a pizza and a beer. The date of the next one hasn't been announced yet, but I'll try and mention it here when it is.