Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

Hello again! Long time, no post. Things have been rather quiet on the blogging front, which I of course feel guilty about, as usual. But these longer gaps seem to have become the norm recently, for better or worse.

The gaps largely relate to me not having done a lot of hobby-related activities in recent weeks. I tried to generate some painting momentum by proclaiming the Year of the Goblin, however after doing pretty well with the first horde of Night Goblins, I kind of ran out of steam. It was partly the Goblins' fault, of course. Night Goblins might be simple to paint, but they're not terribly exciting. 

As it was, I tried to encourage myself by shifting across to painting a couple of characters. I painted these 2 guys shortly after the Night Goblins, however they did little to improve my level of hobby energy, and my momentum stalled. 

A couple of ugly little retro twins who need a hanky. Was too lazy to take a proper photo in the light box, sorry...

Rather than trying to force myself back onto the painting wagon, I decided instead to let myself focus on less demanding things (ie: PC games). This was partly driven by the arrival of a Kickstarter project I backed some time ago, Battletech. I was pretty excited by this, and set about playing my way through the campaign. The game is not without its occasional flaws, but overall I really enjoyed playing through the story.

Turn-based mech combat. Basically it's what it says on the box - the Battletech tabletop game in PC form.

I've still been playing plenty of Mechwarrior Online (although I've not been bothering to stream anything), but the other thing I've finally gone back to is Total War: Warhammer. I had only really played my way deep into a single campaign with the Empire, and decided I wanted to try one of the other angles. I dabbled briefly with Orcs, but found myself decidedly unhappy when I was faced with the task of ruining what was left of the Dwarf empire. I decided that maybe I was approaching this from the wrong direction, and instead started another campaign, this time on the side of the Dwarfs.

Rebuilding the fallen Dwarf empire was always a bit of a campaign fantasy for me in Warhammer, so this angle immediately felt like a better fit. As usual I fumbled around a bit in some of my early battles and no doubt made various campaign-level mistakes, but I'm now 108 turns into it and I feel I have my feet properly under me.

The blue is me. I basically hold everything in the World's Edge Mountains, south of Karak-a-Karak. The dark colour next to me is controlled by my friends in Barak Var, and the turquoise and red above me are also Dwarf allies. Things are looking up for the stunties! 

Below is one of the more satisfying elements of my empire. I have control of Karak Eight Peaks! It was actually already under the control of Karak Azul, but those guys were getting crushed by Orcs so I rescued them and then invited them to join my confederation.

Greatest of the Southern holds, and safely within Dwarf hands. Of course, it helps that there are no Skaven in this game. They don't appear until Total War: Warhammer II, and I have no idea if that would mean Queek running around under my feet.

I believe at this point we might have completely eradicated the greenskin menace from the Old World. All the Orc and Goblin tribes are gone. From here, I intend to push north. The Vampires have been very well behaved in regard to me, but they've caused my allies some angst and so it's time to deal with them on my way up to fight Chaos. Bigger and better things!

The throng begins to muster on the doorstep of Sylvania.

I really do love this game. No, it's not the same as Warhammer Fantasy. But they've done a great job of capturing the atmosphere and character of the Warhammer world, and honestly over time I've been coming to realise that this is probably what I miss most of all, more than a supported edition of the battle game.

On the modelling front I've made some stilted progress toward painting some more Goblins, but nothing worth getting excited about yet. If I achieve any real momentum or progress, you'll no doubt hear about it here.