More on the Ishoo Atey-For poll.

Well, the built in poll widget continues to malfunction, so I've done a bit of research and switched over to another service.
The Blogger forums speak highly of Polldaddy, which I was considering using, however it requires you to set up a Wordpress account to access it.
So I've gone with a site called BlogPolls, which doesn't require an account, but which does give you some very helpful stats if you do create an account.
I might end up trying a few other services before settling down on one, but for the Ishoo Atey-For poll, this is the one I will use.

Of course, this means all of you will now need to vote again...

Ishoo Atey-For Poll

I've been experiencing some problems with the Poll gadget lately. It seems to take a while to register votes, and it's been a bit... clunky.
The the Ishoo Atey-For Poll started losing votes...
Apparently this is due to the Blogger poll gadget being not great. I've restarted the poll using the Blogger gadget, and hopefully this will work. If not, I've been recommended to an alternative which I may be implementing.
If you have already voted on the Ishoo Atey-For poll, I'm sorry, but you will have to vote again due to the gadget glitching. Hopefully this can be over come, and it'll never happen again.

Little Wars 2013 - Pretty Pictures and Random Ramblings.

     Well, Little Wars is over for another year, and the first participation game I've ever run at a convention is also over.

Hrond! This is before the Matt arrived, so I have my two warbands on display along with a few other things.

     Matt and I ended up running Fanticide twice during the day. The first time I played using the Hagwood Witches while Matt assisted my colleague, Justin, who has never played anything in his life, to lead the Puppets. The second time round, part-time HGC member Aaron (of whom more later) led the Puppets against a nice chap named Ross, and won simply on total souls killed while cheerfully ignoring the scenario objectives.
All the players seemed to enjoy the game, and we got positive comments about the ease of play and fun factor.

Matt doesn't like tipping casualties over, so we used milk bottles and jelly beans for corpses. The idea was to eat them when a unit with the Vice of Hunger ate the bodies, but we didn't end up using any units with that vice.

     We also got positive comments about the terrain, and I even met the designer of the Martian Cephalopod figure I use as the Lord of Rapacity who leads my other warband, the Insatiable.

The Hot Hag and Scarecrow Reapers pour down the bridge of Hrond. That Jellybean was a puppet skirmisher. Now it's a toad thanks to the Hag's spells.

     As to the rest of the convention -
     I didn't get to join in any of the other games. There was one I was very interested in, but they folded it for lack of players while we were running our first Fanticide game... Fortunately it was being run by part-time HGC member Aaron and once-in-every-five-years HGC member Jan, so they've decided to bring it down to HGC and run it there.
     What I did manage to get into was a short Pathfinder RPG demo. Unfortunately, Matt had to leave soon to tend to his sick son, so we adopted a very gung-ho, kick in the door style of play which was at odds with the scenario, and our limited abilities as starter players. I was quickly stabbed into unconsciousness while trying to demonstrate the error of his ways to a drunken sailor (I was playing a female cleric as an evangelist extreme fundamentalist missionary...)
    There were rather a lot of games going on, but I didn't take any photos. Likewise there was many a trader, but I had only limited finances, so I didn't go nuts. That and there was nothing much of the bring and buy table that really got my attention. I did buy some empire state troops (to turn into Skaven Slaves!) a Malifaux Crew, the X-Wing Miniatures Game starter box because it looked insanely cool, and the In Her Magesty's Name steampunk skirmish rulebook.

    Oh - and don't got forgetting to vote in the next people's choice poll. Democracy only works when you participate.

Ishoo Atey Free: The Levitating Islands of Hrond (Part Two)

Welcome back Hippo fans!

Last Ishoo we built the Levitating Islands of Hrond. Now it's time to build a way for your homicidal warbands onto them - the stairs of Hrond!

And as usual, here's Grot to show you how...

 And there you have it Hippo fans! If you want to see how the whole lot looks when you put it together... you'll just have to go to Little Wars!
That or wait for the inevitable convention report.
Don't forget to vote on the ishoo atey-for reader's choic poll at the top of the page. Unless you are some sort of tragically behind the times person reading this in the distant future, in which case, why couldn't you have invented flying cars faster?

Ishoo Atey-Too: The Levitating Islands of Hrond (Part One)

 Little Wars is next Saturday, and the centre piece (although it'll be to one side...) is almost done. What centre piece you ask? Well, the pair of levitating islands of course! Fantasy settings are all about things which are outside of normal experience, and a good way to emphasise that is to build terrain the likes of which you'd never see in the real world. This can mean making very exotic things, or it can mean taking a fairly basic idea and just tweaking it a little. Hence the levitating island - it's basically the same as making a hill. Except it hovers above the table. 

Now I know what you are asking yourself. Is this going to be hard? 

Maybe Hag Grot can shed some light on the subject...

 And there you have it!
Don't glue the island to the dowels, or the dowels to the base so you can dismantle for storage.
On projects like this, and in weather like this (cold and raining for the last week), you really get an appreciation of fan heaters. A good coat of black paint or a layer of modelling clay can take all day (and I've had one case of three days!) to dry. Stick it in front of a fan heater however...
I usually have one going under my desk to heat the room, and it's quite convenient to just put things in front of it - so long as you remember they are there and don't kick them!
Stay tuned for the next ishoo, where we tackle the all important question of how to get up to the Islands of Hrond!

Ishoo Atey-Wun: Giant Haunted Treestump

Welcome back Hippo Fans! You've probably gathered by now that I'm going to be running some Fanticide participation games at Little Wars this year, which is the perfect opportunity to build some themed terrain! For the Little Wars games, I've planned to build a area known as the Island of Hrond, a magically warped region on the edge of the Hagwood, home of the sinister Hags and their vile scarecrow creations. This means building some of the Hagwood itself - a dark, twisted, magic-ladden haunted forest right out of the darkest of fairy tales! And what could be more awesome and fitting than a GIANT HAUNTED TREESTUMP! Which will be known as The Forest Ancient or something - but that'd make for a confusing post title since no one would know what I was on about, so I've gone with the more descriptive, but not as cool sounding GIANT HAUNTED TREESTUMP! (For best results, this should be bellowed, preferably accompanied by wailing guitars)

Is it hard to build a GHT? Well, let's ask Grot...

 And there you have it Hippo Fans! Stay tuned for the next ishoo, when we tackle the levitating Islands of Hrond themselves!