Good news everyone!

Exeter International Tabletop Day is getting extended and will now be hosted over two venues. Here's the official schedule for the day.


Turn 1

12 noon to 17:30 - Join us in the BikeShed Theatre, Fore Street, Exeter to get your day started.

We'll be running demo games of Star Wars X-Wing (and hopefully Armada), Space Hulk, Timeline, Zombie Dice, Game of Thrones Westeros Intrigue, Settler of Catan and Munchkin. You can also browse The BikeSheds Game Library or bring your own games to play.


Turn 2

18:00 to 23:00 - Board, 85 South Street, Exeter.

The day continues with even more games to play (seriously check out their gaming library it's amazing!).

We'll also be drawing the winner of the Treasure Hunt.

That's right that's almost 12 hours of gaming!!! but don't worry both venues serve food and drinks so you'll be able to keep your energy levels up!


We will also be officially launching the Treasure Hunt on Saturday 28 March and I'm please to announce that Critical Mass will be running a special Space Marine Painting competition that will also launch in the same day! That's two competitions to enter with some great prized to win.
Keep checking back for more information about the day or check out our Facebook page

In the meantime check out our Certificate of Awesome that you can win during the day!

 

International Tabletop Day Exeter UPDATE

Hi all.  I'm pleased to announce that we now have a Facebook page to promote everything that will be going on for International Tabletop Day Exeter.  Head over there now to see the Certificates of Awesome that you can win on the day. 

We have a few announcements left to make so shlikeascribe (Share, Like and Subscribe) to our pages to make sure you are kept up to date.

See you on Saturday 11 April in the BikeShed Theatre, Exeter.

What's on my Painting Table - My fitst Blood Angel (In 17 Years)

I decided to take some time out from painting my Eldar to paint my Blood Angels Captain miniature from Games Day 2012 (Which I didn't attend but my friends got the exclusive figure for me).

Now for those of you who don't know Blood Angels were the first army I ever had when I originally got in to playing Warhammer 40,000 back in the early 90's but when I got back into the hobby a few years ago I decided to collect and play with some new armies that I never had back in the 90's (That's why my first new army was Orks and then Chaos Space Marines and now Elder).  Although I do have some Space Marine stuff in my new collection I decided to go with painting them as Imperial Fists.  However since the release of the new Blood Angels codex (and their new miniatures range) I've been tempted to possible get back into Blood Angels and perhaps do an allied force between them and my Imperial Fists.  So here's my first "New" Blood Angels miniature all painted up.

NB: For some reason the focus isn't that great on some of the photos.  I really need to get myself a proper camera!)

Rear view. 

I decided to do a slightly different paint scheme for my Captain.  His Power Fist for example is slightly different to how it is on the artwork from the 2nd edition 40K box set (which inspired this miniature).  I also gave him brown hair.

The eagle eyed of you may have spotted that he doesn't have his combat knife.  This is because it snapped in half when I was taking it off the sprue.  I really hate finecast for it brittle nature!

Now this dude is finished I've started back on my Eldar.  I'm currently finishing off my remaining Wrathguard and have also started on this War Walker (Which is part of my Combat Patrol).

International Tabletop Day Exeter - Update!

I'm pleased to announce that I will be running an event to celebrate International Tabletop Day 2015.

The When and Where

The Bikeshed Theatre, Fore Street Exeter. 

12 noon - 17:30


What's happening

For those new to Tabletop gaming we'll have introduction games running during the day such as Dobble, Timeline, Zombie Dice, Fluxx and Game of Thrones Westerose Intrigue to play as well as bridging games such as Settlers of Catan, King of Tokyo, Tusuro and Munchkin to move onto.

We'll also have a table set aside for people to try Star Wars X-Wing and a retro gaming table where we'll have 2nd edition Space Hulk to play. 

Experienced gamers can take part in the games we'll have available on the day or they can bring their own.

We'll have Certificates of Awesome to give out (And hopefully some other freebies) and we'll also be running a Tabletop themed treasure hunt and other activities to help promote the event (more details to follow).


Who's supporting the event

As well as the lovely people at the Bikeshed who have agreed to host the event we've also got support from OMG! Comics, Critical Mass and Kirton Games as well as Esdevium Games who will hopefully be providing us with some freebies to give out.


How much does it cost?

Nothing.  It's free to come along and join in the day. 


How can I find out more?

Visit our facebook page or keep an eye on this blog. 

Play more games!

My week in Geek.

Over the past week I've been traveling around the South of England as part of my job.  In-between work, when I have time I like to explore the area that I'm in to see what's there.  This mainly gives me something to do rather than spend the evening in the hotel.   This week in particular has been especially good for finding some odd geeky things. 

At the start of the week I was in Guildford and found it's castle.  (Well I say castle but I actually think it's more of a Keep). Here's some photo's of it.

Guildford castle

It's rook seems to be missing.

Now the reason think this castle looks more like a Keep is because I grew up in Colchester where we have this castle...

Colchester castle. 

Now that's a proper castle!

Also near Guildford (Woking) I stumbled across this awesome Tri-pod sculpture which was apparently erected to celebrate HG Well's War of the Worlds.

just to the right of this sculpture was the local Games Workshop.  How awesome must it be to be playing 40K in there whilst in view of this thing!

And just around the corner I found this jetfighter, on a pole.  not sure why it was there but it looked cool.

Later in the week I was in Southampton and discovered that there was a V&A (That's Victoria and Albert Museum) exhibition on about War Gaming.  I decided to take a look.  I couldn't take  any photo's of the exhibit but there was a lot in there which covered the history of war gaming from the early war games from the Victorian period to military toys that kids use to play with during the First and Second World War to Airfix kits.  They even had video games featured such as Command & Conquer and Call of Duty.  The second part of the exhibit then focused on future and fantasy war gaming and included artefacts on display like a Lego Death Star.  Strangely though no Tabletop wargaming was featured at all.  This did strike me as odd as I did expect games such as Warhammer or Dystopian Wars to be featured or at least mentioned, after all they are a huge part of war gaming history and stand out from toy guns and tanks and computer games.  The closest they had was a copy of Risk on display.  I don't whether this was a deliberate thing but I think the exhibit did miss a vital element of what it was trying to showcase. 

Anyway I did manage to take a photo of this which made me wonder, id this why we play Tabletop war games?

Finally I picked up these two books in a charity shop I visited.  What a find!

What's on my Painting Table - Eldar Warlock/Farseer on Jet Bike

They're finally hear! Images of my painted Warlock/Farseer on Jetbike.

I used transfers to decorate the Warlocks robes and Jetbike. 

My Warlock/Farseer wears the colours of my C'Tan Eldar but also has purple in his palate to signal his high status within the Elder community. 

Side view

Other side view.  You can see where I had to use Green Stuff to make up the robes around the arm.   

Now this bad boy is done I need to work on the rest of my Combat Patrol.  Next up will be to finish my five remaining Wrathguard and then I'll start painting my four Dark Reapers.  I'm slowly getting there. 

Da Mek's workshop - Eldar Warlock/Farseer on Jetbike

Here's some photos showing the construction of a converted warlock on Jetbike miniature that I just completed for my new Eldar army.  If you fancy making one yourself this should give you a rough idea how.  If you do build one let me know.  I'd love to see how yours turns out. 

 

 

I needed a few kits for this conversion.  Mainly the Eldar Jetbike and the plastic Farseer miniature.



First thing to do is to assemble the body of the Jetbike and put the riders legs on.  I also added a tail fin to the jetbike using a piece from the Wrathguard kit.  Top Tip - Don't glue the canopy on yet as you'll need plenty of space to model the green stuff onto the miniature.

Next I trimmed the Farseers body down so that it would sit snuggly on top of the riders legs. 

After some trimming the body is glued into place. 

The next thing to do was to add the right arm (which is steering the Jetbike) to the body.  Again this required some careful trimming. 

Now for the other arm and head.  I glued the second arm furst and then positioned the head accordingly.  In this pose my Warlock is unleashing his Psychic energy onto an enemy unit. 

Using bits from the Farseer kit I added the robes to the Warlock. 

Once dried I filled in any gaps with Green stuff (I used liquid and regular) and dis a bit of remodelling to make the robes look complete.  This took a while and is one of the biggest challenges for me as I've not had much sculpting experience.  Once the green stuff has dried (Leave it for at least 24 hours) I glued on the canopy (complete with an added targeting system)  and I was done.

So what do you think?  I'd love to hear your comments. 

What's on my Painting Table - Second Eldar Jetbike with Shuriken Cannon

Here's some photos of the second Eldar Jetbike conversion I've been working on.  As you'll see it's slightly different to the first Jetbike with Shuriken Cannon which I converted as it follows a style similar to the GW kit.  This is deliberate as my Eldar are meant to be planet dwellers and as such each have slightly developed their own unique style in the maintaince and design of their technology.

 

A good view of the Shuriken Cannon

I left the Shuriken Catapult on this side as I wanted to show that my non-Craftworld Eldar had literally just converted one of their jetbikes to have a cannon on it due to requirements and demand.  As such the engineers who built it hadn't bothered to remove the second catapult, possible due to time constraints, so they opted to just leave it on but disarm it. 

Front view.  Again I slightly changed my colour scheme for the pilot and gave him a crimson helmet.  I think I''' stick to this pattern for the rest of my guardians.   

Here's a sneak peek at the converted Warlock/Farseer on a Jetbike.  As you can see it's in the very early stages of painting.  He'll be used in my Combat Patrol games.  I'll be posting an article on how I made him soon.