How it starts...

An avid board game fanatic I learned young that you can tell every game what the outcome will be by a specific point.  One of our favorite board games when I was growing up was this unique game called The Farming Game. Most people have probably never heard of it. The slogan is fact and it was "created on the seat of a tractor" and as a farm girl I thought it was awesome. To this day it is a staple in the board game cupboards of most of our extended family. There is a point in this game, at about year three that you can tell who will very likely win (dice are included and cards that could change).

After we all got married and started moving out on our own we started looking to find copies of the game so that the much loved board that was at my mom's house didn't have to travel so much. In our search we discovered that they had added another game to the options they sold and we just had to have it.

We played this game about five times before we realized that there was one card in the game that would dictate the game, as soon as that card was drawn you might as well end the game because it was highly unlikely that anyone else would have a chance to win. We still like to play once in a while but not as often as we might other games.

We have a great many games in our game cupboard, we have even had to split the cupboard into child friendly and those which require more reading and patience than most young kids can handle. Settlers of Catan, Monolpoly Millionaire, Axis and Allies, Full House, Dungeon Lords, and a bunch of others are those we have accumulated, but we have also discovered that because we play board games regularly our kids want to as well and there is only so many times they will  play memory or tic tac toe, they want to play our games. We have learned that Monopoly and Cribbage are fabulous teachers of math skills while chess and checkers encourages the kids to use their smiles to develop strategy. And the whole time they think they are just having fun!

Warhammer, as I frequently tell people, is like taking Chess and Risk, jamming them together and shaking them up. I figure if my kids can play Chess and Risk like games they can play Warhammer too.

When I worked at the hobby centre we were often full to capacity with kids aged 5 and up. We had kids of various abilities, strengths, learning abilities, and levels of social skills but yet they were all able to come together to get excited about the hobby and the game. Of course there were lots who didn't have the patience or care to sit down and spend time painting their models with the love and care that those who seek to win painting awards do, but they did what they needed to do. It didn't matter, they could still have fun and enjoy the aspects of the hobby that they wanted to.

Friday night was always jam packed full of kids participating. Not sitting glued to a TV or a video game, not sitting as individuals somewhere but actually physically interacting with people, playing games and laughing and learning.

I remember one boy who struggled in school and something brought him and his dad into the store that first day, they both decided to get involved. After a month the dad and I were talking and he confided "I let him take the Armybook to school and his teacher took me aside yesterday to tell me that she had seen his ability to read, comprehend and focus double and his math skills had grown. I never imagined this would affect that part of his life, I was just looking for something we could do together."

That child was not the only one I heard that kind of story about. We frequently hosted games days for kids who were home schooled to give them a social engagement that was also instructive. 

In our home I told about how easy we found it to game with our kids. We used high chairs when they were young enough but even now they play sometimes. Some have their own armies, but mostly they just play with us. Rolling dice, using the measuring tapes. Sometimes when we are just playing for fun we even let them decide how to deploy units.

For you parents who already have your kids interested in painting with you or playing games with you I say encourage it! Read with them from the army books and rule books, get them a couple of figs to paint, let them roll your dice or help with the tape measure. Play other games with them to start teaching them how to think and enjoy. It can easily become a regular fun night, a family activity that they enjoy and that you can enjoy with them. 

This is how they start. This is how it all starts.

I need a New BSB

My lovely army is lacking a BSB since after my last tournament the poll broke.

I am okay with the breaking because I have always hated that BSB with it's top heavy banner: this is not the first time it has broken.

I have been using my banner from my grail knights in the mean time but I really need to do up a character that fits with my Mike the Knight theme.

Any suggestions?

My hobby has become more than models

Excuse the size of the photograph. I am working from my iPad, it is rather new to me so still trying to get used to how to insert pictures and have not figured out yet how to resize or a variety of other things hahaha. So much for me being a bit of a computer nerd, guess I should stick to being a Warhammer nerd.

This red and blue shield design matches the heraldry of my Bretonnians, and is in fact the bag I made for myself...which is the reason I started making these bags. I mentioned these before in a couple of posts but had never posted a picture of my own bag so thought I would do so.

I currently have some in the works for the Foodhammer circuit being held in the Vancouver, BC area as well. I have been enjoying the relaxation of working on these bags and the challenge of doing to different designs. Despite having nearly sliced through my fingers I even finished the other bags I had on order and they have been posted or set aside for delivery at the tournament I am running next month (Kippers' Melee).

The bags a admirably resilient and I have been quite happy with my own. I can do custom sizes, colors, etc. Just shoot me a message and we can discuss the technical bits like colors, symbols, etc.

Carmine means Bright Red

Its a beautiful model Forgeworld put out, both with the rider and without but right from the start I knew I had to have the Carmine Dragon.

What to Say?

This one won't have much in the way of pictures, it is more of a musing after my most recent BoLS article and the nearly 100 comments currently posted.

I wrote the article after being asked for about the thousandth time (slightly exaggerated) how a friend could convince his girl friend to participate in the hobby. So it was taking all the questions I had been asked over the years, all the answers I was given by the girl friends and wives I have talked to over the years. Overall the article was agreed with, and accepted. The odd comment was negative.

Now that I'm writing though, I want to write the kind of thing people want to read, answer the questions people do have. I could talk for days about the Chumphammer or Dwellers Below episodes, my games with my Brets, that new army that I started and haven't touched in at least a month, the other models I am painting....I get bored of that though ha ha ha so what do you want to hear?

See, you're not the only one putting your hobby down

Reading reviews, emails and comments that have built up since I started writing this blog and for BoLS it had made me (more) grateful that or hobby community is so vast and to find that there are times when we all feel the stretch of knowing whether to focus on family or the hobby.


My schedule in September has proven challenging for me, even with all my tips and advice on how to juggle time and family. With one child at school full time and two still at home we have contended with my intermittent work schedule, the commencement of school (grade 1), start up of a preschool like program called Strong Start (parents must attend with their children), sickness, my husband's work schedule, a 
Warhammmer convention I am running and all the day to day challenges of running a household. Thankfully I have a pretty good grip on the schedule now but I have find myself without a laptop (it blew up thanks to some moron who decided to connect a worm and a trojan virus to something somewhere-you have my eternal enmity) and working on an iPad or my Android phone is proving rediculous for dealing with photos so tonight I have dredged a desktop computer out of a closet and will reacquaint myself with the use of a mouse and keyboard. Thank goodness I had the foresight to upload all my pictures to Google Drive.

I've decided that running a convention is a lot more work than I expected though. That's probably the biggest project on my table right now. Kippers' Melee was just a baby of an event last year compared to what it is
this year. Maxed at 18 Fantasy players it was, and now this year I have taken on expanding the Fantasy event to 30 players (possibly more because we might have tables open up) and added 40K, Warmachine, X-Wing, Malifaux, Magic the Gathering, open gaming and demos and venders....


It's a ton of work. I don't think any players who attend events truly understand or appreciate what it takes for a Tournament Organizer unless they have actually done it, but my intention is not to unload on here what about that.

The tournament scene in Canada, especially on the west coast, has been sparse. There were only really two big events, with most events single day, but suddenly in 2013 there has been an influx of events in the west coast.

2013 Events included:
Gottacon - Victoria, Februrary 2013
Wet Coast GT - Vancouver (specifically Burnaby), July 2013
Attack-X - Kamloops, September 2013
Kippers' Melee - Nanaimo, October 25-27
TSHFT - Vancouver (Richmond), November 2013
Foodhammer - Vancouver (Langley), November/December 2013

This does not include the additional events in driving distance into the States:
Black Sheep Brawl - Salem, OR, February 2013
OFCC - Vancouver, WA, June 2013
TSHFT - Portland, OR, September 2013

And it does not include GenCon, Astronomicon, Adepticon or any of the other more international events that occur that many of the BC crowd try to go to. It is a major change for us here.

With kids the influx of tournaments becomes a bigger challenge because of course on top of the typical expense of travel and lodging, food and alcohol (for those of you who drink), there is the added challenge of childcare. I have been extremely blessed to have family and friends willing and able to take my kids for the events that I have been able to attend, not everyone is so lucky.

As a TO it is hard for me to hear friends say they can't attend the events I am running but at the same time I completely understand that soemtimes you have to forego events that you want to attend because the care of your children are more important. To those parents who miss out on events because you put your kids or your spouse first, thank you for being good parents and for realizing that your kids need you more than you need to play Warhammer (as much as I know that grates on you sometimes). Know that you are not alone and that we TOs understand that commitment.

I should get going for tonight I still need to finish off my next acticle for BoLS and I have to get some serious work done for to create my program and get a few things organized for Kippers' Melee.

For those of you who don't mind the travel I suggest you go the the website, get your ticket and come out to the event. It is shaping up to be an awesome event and I would love to see you there!

Tips & Tricks to Painting with Kids

This post is coming along now  mostly because of Parcival's comments and questions  on my Bell of Lost Souls article "Hobby: WFB Summer Camp Bretonians". It was always something I planned to write and post eventually but I don't mind doing it now. I will probably touch on it again later too.

Parcival's comment was:

Cool, thanks a lot for your reply. :-) Yes, they sleep 16 hours a day, but when my daughter was born I didn't have the energy to do *anything* because of getting up at night so often. :-/ It wasn't until she was six months old and started to eat regular food (and thus sleeping through the night) that I started to paint again.

Now she is four and wants to paint miniatures, too, but I am sort of nervous to let her paint with acrylics. Any tips on that, too?

Where to start with answering this....

When my oldest was born I had post pardum really bad so getting out of bed to do anything was a challenge and yes, I was constantly tired from having to do feedings and laundry and typical household stuff as well as dealing with the depression. I found that despite not having the energy to do it that I would start out forcing myself to paint, or on occassion sit and stare at my desk or my models and decide how I planned to paint them would usually relax me. There are plenty of times to this day when my husband will poke me and tell me I should go paint (I have 2 half finished monsters and about 7 infantry models sitting on my painting desk at the moment) and I will whine that I have not got the energy. 

 Most of the time I will still go sit at the desk, fiddle with paints, shift things around and eventually pick up the brush. We often will set ourselves up with a TV show or movie and work on projects while we watch Bones, NCIS, Criminal Minds or whatever documentary or movie we find that peeks our interest or turn on a podcast to listen to (most often for me it is Chumphammer or Dwellers Below). It is amazing how much painting you can get done if half your attention is relaxing and the other is controlling the paintbrush.

 Forcing yourself to paint when you have no energy to do anything can certainly backfire, you could wind up with more paint spills than usual or more nicks in your fingers if you're building because you misjudge the blade but by forcing yourself you're developing a habit and eventually it will be easier. I also find that sometimes it is healthy to steer clear of your painting desk when you don't have the energy to paint, its like taking a sabatical and refreshes your creative juices.

I also found that my son's desire to paint--he started his first model at the age 3--meant that I would be sitting at my desk with him so I might as well paint too instead of just sitting watching him make a mess.

We started him with wooden trains that we found on sale at Michael's but you can get wooden or ceramic toys at any dollar store, or general hobby store. I didn't have the same hang up about the acrylic paints that Parcival does.

My theory was that if he was going to paint I wanted him to learn to respect the same tools he saw me use, and we all know kids mimic their parents so I worried that if I gave him anything different than he saw me using that he would get upset. I fully expected a mess and to keep it to a minimum I would make him sit there in his diaper or underwear while he painted. His models were always overtop of papertowel or a bag of some kind and I always let him choose what color he wanted. 

My experience with acrylics (we use the GW paints) is to keep them off the carpet. Kids will spill no matter how hard they try not to or the paint brush will slip. It washes off their skin pretty easy and worst case if they take a few bottles and decide to paint their bunk beds it comes off with a spray of Simple Green and a lot of elbow grease behind a Mr Clean Magic Eraser (I have experience with this). If it does get on the carpet, if you're quick enough you can get most of it out. Do not rub it or spray chemical on it. Mix vinegar and warm water and go grab your wet vac! You dab the vinegar/water mix directly onto the paint and immediately suck it off with the wet vac. Its not a perfect method but I was able to remove many, many colors of paint off the floor this way. The wet vac is so the water doesn't seep into the carpet and wood under the carpet and get musty and moldy. If you can afford to call in a carpet cleaning service as quickly as possible because they might be able to get some out as well, but the main thing to remember is the faster you do it the faster you can salvage the carpet becasue the paint won't be able to set.

The biggest thing to remember with kids is their attention spans are a lot shorter than ours. When my oldest was 3 it was all he could do to sit and paint one side of the train without getting wiggly. I found that immensely frustrating because I would spend ten minutes getting him sorted out and he would paint for two. I tried forcing him to sit longer but that wound up with him rushing and getting sloppy in his painting just trying to finish so I would let him go.

Eventually I figured out his pattern and his neds and it was a lot easier to do. I stopped painting at the same time in order to help show him how to hold the paintbrush properly and where he was pooling paint. Sometimes he didn't care, but he still remembered it. Now it is immensely easier to paint with him because he can set up most of it himself and instead of choosing three guys at a time to paint he will take ten and do an assembly line.

So my tips for painting with kids:

• Find somewhere you can buy wooden or ceramic models they can paint instead of letting them paint your expensive Warhammer models.
• Don't just shove a brush at them and watch them splatter paint everywhere, sit them on your lap or next to you and teach them the basics.
• Teach them proper care for the paints and brushes, paint palette and water cup
• If they're bored or don't want to paint don't force them.
• When they want to paint go do it, even if you're in the middle of watching the news, eventually they'll stop asking if you keeping saying "we'll do it later" or they'll try to do it themselves.--this is the hardest one for me, especially when they're all asking. 
• Praise them even when it looks like they held the model upside down in the paint pot.
• Give them somewhere near your own models to display theirs.
• Don't be afraid of the mess they'll make, it washes off everything except carpets and fabric.
• Get them some playdough, plastercine or other child friendly putting they can sculpt with, they will be better at conversions down the road if they're given chances to sculpt and discover how putty works.
• Reward them when they finish a project (we buy ourselves new models to paint, maybe let them do the same)

The Kingdom of Glendragon (within the Borders of Bretonnia)

After my Summer Camp story went up on BoLS I've been asked a few times about the heraldry being kept the same since the true fluff behind a Brettonnian army is the same as any true Medieval army where each person has their own heraldry. I tried the individual heraldry before, all different color knights, heraldry, everything and found that it looked very haphazard sitting on the tournament table. So I started painting the red and blue with the original intention that I would be using the red and blue to make everything uniform but also to be able to individualize the various units. In some of my pictures you'll see slight variances between the different unit types. But while I was painting and doing up a couple of conversions I also had my youngest child (he was 2 at the time) see them and chime in "Mommy it's Mike the Knight"--Mike the Knight, for those who don't know is a very popular kids TV character. Following his lead my daughter asked "Mommy, which one is Evvy?" Taking the cue from them I then started to theme my army around the show with the main difference being that I'm still not confident enough with my freehand to accomplish the heraldry the real Mike has so I changed that and then built it into the Bret fluff so that it worked for me. Here's my tale.

Hobby Wounds

Today marks a milestone and I thought I would record it here and pose the question: what is the worst thing you have had happen while taking part in the hobby?

Today was mine.

I was cutting plasticard when a fly flew up my nose, I jumped, the knife slipped....1 tetnis shot, 2 stitches, and 3 bandaids later I have two very sore fingers and a lot more respect for my hobby knife.

What's your worst battle wound?

(and the picture is prior to going to the hospital)

Crafty? Me? No Way!

My entire childhood and teenage years I argued and insisted that I was not a crafty person and therefore had no need to learn to paint, sew, etc. It is hard to claim I am not crafty when involved with Warhammer.

Kippers' Melee

I have Kippers' Melee on the brain. It is almost all I think about now with the event coming up so quick.

WFB: Importance of a Well Dressed Table

 There is nothing worse when playing Warhammer than looking at the table and wondering where all the terrain is. Or why there is nothing but terrain on the table. A well dressed table is crucial to playing a proper game of Warhammer.

Technical difficulties

So for those wondering why I haven't posted recently, I have written a few posts but an having technically difficulties with uploading pictures. Once I can fix that you will be bombarded.

Thanks for your patience :)