Blogger's notifications are spam-friendly rubbish

I've just noticed that Blogger doesn't notify me of any comments to my posts. They must have at one point, but I'm not getting them any more.

I only noticed when I looked at a recentish post and noticed a spam reply. :(

And there was no way to delete the spam from the blog page itself. You have to go into the Blogger dashboard, select Comments from the sidebar menu, then wade through them, find the spam, and delete them from there.

Wow. It is utterly horrible.

I had considered moving away from Blogger a while ago, but stuck around because of the wargaming community here. But over the last few years, with so little miniature painting or wargaming that I've done, nobody knows who I am. Which is fine, but it means that I either drop the blog entirely or move to another platform which will get even less notice. 

Personally, I'm not one for social media, and while I have a Twitter account, it's not focused on wargaming. It's just everything (and I haven't used that in a while either). And Facebook, well, they're unethical wankers and I won't touch any of their software.

Do you have a Blogger blog?

If so, check your comments for spam. I guarantee you will have some you weren't aware of.

Unfortunately it means we should be constantly checking the Comments page in the dashboard because Blogger is about as feature-packed as a potato.

Also, if you have any idea how to change the attached email address, I've love to know how.

I have mine configured with an old email address which must have been set up before Google bought Blogger. And I'm not able to change it, not even to the email address of my linked Google account.

It'd be really nice to change it.

Oh and while I'm at it, the post publishing date is a mess here. It has no concept of timezone. If I publish this now and leave the default date (which is current in my timezone), BLogger will publish it when it hits that time on their servers. 

Yeah, it's a complete mess. I think I will move away from here.

There's more to the Wargaming hobby than Games Workshop

Over the last decade or so, I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Games Workshop. I was first introduced to them in around 1988. I was 12 or 13 years old, had just returned from a year-long "holiday" to Australia with my parents, and was discovering a lot of new things at that age. 

Such as a dedicated comic store! And a book/magazine store called something like Huyser's in Wellington city (not sure of the spelling or if I've even remembered that correctly). It was on Victoria Street, right where the curry shop next door to Cheapskates is. 

Huyser's started stocking White Dwarf magazine and Citadel miniatures and paints. And not really having a budget of my own at the time, I just flipped through the mags. 

 

Now remember, this was a time (actually the tail end) of when White Dwarf was a general wargaming/roleplaying hobby magazine. A few years later, they came to the conclusion that they were the hobby and it became The Hobby. Which is a clever and insidious marketing tactic now that I look back on it.

[WIP] 10mm Chaos - Warmaster/Kings of War

I think I mentioned that I'd been working on some Warmaster Chaos minis, or was going to.

Recently, I glued some original Warmaster Chaos minis (gifted by my good and generous friend B.) to some coffee stirring sticks and started painting them.

Yes, you'll see evidence of another commission in progress. Labyrinth minis from the boardgame. Ludo, Hoggle, Sarah, and Jareth (almost done). More on them in a future episode. :)

First game of Stargrave--and it was fantastic!

Today I went back to the local wargaming club--Wellington Warlords--and had the pleasure of being shown the Stargrave ropes by John, from over at The Daemon's Claw blog.

And because Stargrave is the sort of sci-fi skirmish game that allows us to play with whatever toys we want, we played it with Judge Dredd minis. I played a crew of Mega-city One Judges, and John played a crew of Sov Judges.

My crew lined up at the table edge:

Nearly finished Warmaster terrain, Shieldmaidens

In my last post I talked about the Shieldmaidens I 3D printed for Ragnarok.

Well, those two figures are almost done. They were done, but I went overboard on the Army Painter Strong Tone so they're a bit too dark. Maybe I'll rework them and bring out the highlights or maybe I'll just use them as a learning experience for the next batch. There are 6 or 7 more that I've printed and glued together, plus a couple of others that need reprints of weapons or shields.

But the first two look like this:

I know, I really have to get some better lighting. It's been a long time since I've done any photography, so these are just taken with my cellphone under my painting lamp.

First successful 3D print! Vikings for Ragnarok!

I mentioned I recently got a 3D printer, and I've been working my way through the failures to try to get that first successful job. Well I just got it. 

Today in the mail I received a package from Grimfrost in Sweden, which included a lovely viking beard comb, a horn drinking mug, and a copy of Osprey's Ragnarok! Can't really go wrong with heavy metal combat in the Viking age! haha

And with that in mind, I needed some figures. I'd long sold off my Saga figures, so I needed something new. And with the power of a 3D printer at my command, I didn't even have to wait for shipping or get up off my chuff to go visit a store.

I hopped on over to my favourite 3D printing site, and did a search. Out of all the very nice options, my first pick was this Shieldmaiden warband by Asgard Rising Miniatures.

The first two figures I attempted were the Shieldmaiden Chieftan Aidda with Gjermundbu helmet, and a Shieldmaiden warrior. And well, apart from a couple of post-production hiccups, they came out really well. All the bits were there, nothing was out of kilter, and they just came out great.

The issues I had were that the supports were so thick, I hamfistedly pried them off with a too-large pair of nippers, and lost a bit of Aidda's hair tassel, a chunk off the front of her chainmail coat, and a bit off her arm where the shield fist joins. 

None of these should be too noticable, and as I say, they were post-production. The actual prints came out perfectly. My experiments led me to increasing the number of base layers and slowing down the normal layers another half-second from previous attempts. 

Enough of my rambling. This is them.

I think the photo doesn't do them justice at this stage, but they're glued together and tomorrow morning I'll start painting them and see how they turn out, plus put more of the warband through the printer.

I'm pretty happy right now.

I raise my cup to Odin. 

Painty like it's 1999

 I've been painting hard this year. And I've been reassessing the games I play.

Sci-fi Skirmish

So far this year (and for the last few years) I haven't been doing much actual gaming. But this year I've been on a bit of a Necromunda kick. Really enjoying it a lot, but looking for more. I want to be able to play different settings or different kinds of sci-fi skirmish games without being locked into just one setting and one set of forces.

Stargrave might be the winner there. 

But I'll probably still play Necromunda because I recently talked at least one friend into paying butt tonnes of money for the figures and the books.

Kings of War / Mass Fantasy Battles

I found a guy (Geek Gaming Scenics) on Youtube who scaled down a game of Kings of War to 10mm and that really piqued my interest, naturally being a big fan of Warmaster. :) And that video made me realise that KoW isn't like old WH Fantasy. The figures aren't individual, but mounted all together on a base. Or at least, they can be. And man, that just makes the game so much less fiddly.